It goes without saying that Christmas isn’t an easy time for alcoholics and their families. In fact, I came to the grim realisation many years ago that Christmas isn’t an easy time for anyone ever, and after what has been a truly awful year for the entire global population, I’m not in any particular mood for special pleading here. But the fact remains. Year in, year out, for the Christmas alcoholic and their families, the challenges remain difficult at best, overwhelming and unspeakably traumatic at worst. And it starts, as it so often does with trauma, at home.
But in the first instance, and on a lighter note, of course it’s not unreasonable to have a drink at Christmas, or even to get drunk, why ever not? Back in the day, when I could still drink normally, my own much cherished tradition was to embark on a kind of Christmas Eve substance snowstorm, that would start as early as last-minute preparations would allow. From the age of about 17 until about two years ago, that was the thing. Last minute running around, then out with the boys and girls drinking heavily until, either metaphorically or literally, it was lights out time.
Many are the Christmas war stories of course, but the one that springs immediately to mind is the time I scaled the midnight drainpipes of a friend’s house to clatter on his bedroom window and wish him Happy Christmas. ‘Fuck off Jordan’, came the not unreasonable reply from inside and, courtesy of whatever condition I was in, I promptly slipped and fell two-storeys down, landing on my back in the winter streets, badly winded and probably lucky to be un-paralysed. In response, I then ungratefully propelled a nearby brick, Quarterback-style, through his window, as my own special way of ensuring that he received my season’s greetings regardless. Those were the days, and so on.
But this amusing tale of drunken Christmas shenanigans has a darker edge, which I only realised later, when I discovered that his young daughter had been in his upstairs flat, sleeping quietly, awaiting Santa. Instead a drunken and aggressive adult had thrown a brick through her dad’s window, sending broken glass showering across the room. No one was hurt, but it hadn’t even occurred to me that she might be there, and yet it was Christmas Eve. It took me a long time to forgive myself for that one.
Now, my own depredations aside (and clearly there are many), this is kind of where I’m headed. The anecdotes may or may not be amusing, and vary in magnitude – in my case, most often it was just a question of having a monstrous hangover and not being able to even look at a lavishly prepared Christmas dinner. I’ve spent more Christmas Days retching into a toilet bowl than I care to (or literally can) remember. The general solution to that of course was to drink more alcohol, and so off we went again.
But my point is that we stand to do as much harm to other people as we do to ourselves, when we get smashed at Christmas – particularly when those people are children. And I don’t want to come across here as some of kind of prude, or lecture people about what they drink and how they should or shouldn’t treat their kids. I don’t advocate general temperance and, having been an ardent disciple of the creed, am still sufficiently bacchanalian to believe that we should, indeed, ‘eat, drink and be merry’, if that’s what makes us happy. But even for those without children, it’s still about them, because we were all them once, right? For those of us that celebrate, that expectant child at Christmas is all of us, or was.
For all my adult forays in the more unhinged versions of Christmas, I’m a seasonal traditionalist at heart so, for me, it was always about children, in one way or another. Much of my own childhood was truly happy, and for me and my family, Christmas was, once a year, at the very heart of that happiness. Those very cherished memories will never leave me.
But as I grew a bit older, and things changed domestically, a darkness, the darkness of parental alcoholism, appeared over Christmas, and that changed things forever. I’m not here to describe those Christmases, it’s too personal, but I am here to say that facing alcoholism at Christmas as a child is a truly chilling experience. Those memories will never leave me either.
However it was, or is now, my own Christmas this year, as a recovering alcoholic will again be a difficult one. Drunk or sober, it always is. Such is life. For the next couple of days I have my son staying with me and, except for happiness and fun, he won’t be subject to the things I’ve described, or skirted around, above. He’s my living reason to remember the true meaning of Christmas, as I’ve always thought of it. When he’s gone back to his mum, I’m going to be honest and say, who knows? I’m an alcoholic and to be so at this time of year is to be vulnerable. Last year, for the first time in my adult life, I got away with it, and remained sober, a thing I’m very proud of. Quietly, in my own way, that being a (hopefully sober) visit to Midnight Mass, I plan to do the same again this year too.
However it is for you, I wish you all a very happy Christmas. Be drunk if you will, have fun, be safe and most of all be happy.
Nick Jordan
Photo by Eugene Zhyvchik on Unsplash
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