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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The writer is an author of fiction, cookbooks and poetry anthologies. his latest book is ‘The Dinner Table’, a collection of food writing

There is something paradoxical about Christmas. Perhaps this is the whole business of the God-child; perhaps it is the pagan light-dark dichotomy. Perhaps this is how we subconsciously fill the hibernation period with more social engagements than the previous 11 months combined. Perhaps this escapist nature of matter is only possible because we cannot avoid it. This is my revelation of the year: I just love Christmas because I’m so bad at Christmas.

I started thinking about it early, like in October: buy something beautiful for the tree, look at the ribbons, consider my themes (!). I always have a tree, and usually one that is too big for any place we live. There are two wicker hampers that live on the top shelf and I’m starting to fantasize about opening them when daylight savings begins: the minute, usually , I began to succumb to the darkness of the year.

Like most, my instinct is to avoid seasonal affective disorder. If I were a bear I would be fine (salmon sashimi; long sleep), but I am a man with a big and happy family. We have traditions to carry on! Places to be! People who can see! I have too much to do for dormancy to be a viable option.

Also, I miss it. I’ve had a few years, for various reasons, of very bad Decembers and I couldn’t stop myself even then: mince pies in the hospital lobby, small cleaning trees critical -care for windows, make advent calendars on the ward floor with a mini scalpel and some Pritt Sticks. The year the world shut down and skipping the whole thing was possible, I ate caviar and crisps in the bath and watched Carol solo on Christmas Eve: happy, joyful, and the only way out of a complete pit of destruction.

Christmas cannot be ignored. The alternative is not just a live bear: the alternative is the pit.

So, I guess, if I’m in a house fire, I might consider getting the Christmas box first. Nowhere else in my life have I developed such a sophisticated system of self-defense against the dark: velvet ribbons in six different shades, wicker angels, frosted Indian baubles the size of two fists and as small as marble. A polished goat bone ring and some Polish stained glass. Miniatures of all kinds: toasters, toucans, tinned fish and — fresh from the National Theatre’s latest production — shimmery glass ballet shoes on taffeta ribbon.

These fragments I keep against my ruin, by which I mean, the reality of what we have today: canceled catsitters, restless Secret Santas, loneliness that is misunderstood or underappreciated, regular loneliness, last-minute deadlines, delayed trains. , baggage allowance, burnt meat, busy roads, family fights, rain, darkness, trauma, too much talking, insufficient return on effort and the proximity of income tax.

As my mother likes to say (in one of many family traditions) and quoting her childhood neighbor’s mother to her teenage boyfriend: How was Christmas? Oh, you know: some rows and some mistakes. These things, or some of them, are inevitable.

And yet, some things are also unavoidable. If you can’t beat them, join them: if you can’t escape fromdefection onor to the.

There is a technique to calm a panic attack that relies on the sufferer to observe their surroundings through the prism of the senses: five things you see, four things you hear, three things you tangible, two things you can smell, one. something you can taste.

It’s been very helpful all along, but it’s even better now. The irony of Christmas is that it should contain everything at once, which is what makes it so inspiring: joy, pain, loss, longing, big sandwiches. It creates a microscope and a magnifying glass in your life, regardless of how you live it.

Such high-intensity overwhelm can only be balanced by careful observation of detail: the spinning and shining of, for example, a violet-tinted glass garlic bulb on a fine gold thread; the woodcut interior of an Angela Harding advent calendar; the glitter of demerara sugar on a star-topped mince pie. The happy rosy crackle of Netflix 4K Birchwood Fireplace For Your Home: Crackling Edition. A bowl of quick skins. A quality Street cover under the coffee table. A paper hat torn off the great head of a man’s uncle. The day is short when it starts. Leftover midnight. Happiness, wherever it is found, and wherever it is darkest.