Recalibrating Christmas, one year at a time.
Midnight Mass at the Brompton Oratory, 2013. As the celestial music and voices swirled to ever-loftier heights to brush the blue and gold of the dome, the baby began to move inside me. I leant against my husband, overcome with a sense of serenity and calm.
Later, after what would be my last Christmas morning lie-in to date, we would host Christmas in our first home together, a tall Victorian townhouse swathed in greenery and mistletoe. We would serve champagne and goose to the in-laws and my largely estranged father (the last time I would spend Christmas with him, as it turned out), then gently send them on their way with Fortnum’s chocolates and trinkets. We retrenched and regrouped, having established our own Christmas, our own traditions, our own family.
