Laughter is the key to surviving Christmas

Joy. Family. Love. Lights. Stars. Festivity. And yes, all of those, if you’re lucky, and they are happy words, words that give you that fuzzy glow. Others come fast down the track, of course. War. Disasters. Accidents. Distress. Tears.

I am old now so my most familiar Christmas word is ‘memory’, although I live in the present and ‘fun’ is definitely a Christmas word – but ‘funny’? Yet as I have been sitting by the log fire thinking about Christmases past, funny keeps cropping up.

I said, knife poised, that I hoped it wasn’t the steak pie we were about to eat with our cream or custard

One should never laugh at another’s misfortunes, but the first Christmas after the war, I got a third-hand red tricycle, made of what seemed like cast iron. It was sent down on the train from cousins in Sheffield and was a thing of wonder. I was only three and I found it tricky to get the hang of the pedals so Dad got on to show me. He was a big man and the thing must indeed have been cast iron, but he had no idea how to ride it and landed on his bottom on the pavement. I laughed until I got hiccups.

The next year, on leave from the RAF, he brought home a reel of tinfoil – actually radar chaff – worth a Google – to be plaited into streamers. First Dad cut himself and then the cat got the reel and tied itself up in it, before cutting itself too. Our streamers were smeared red, but neither needed stitches so it was funny.

Every A&E is full of Christmas injuries, too serious to be amusing. The year my husband stuck a fir tree branch in his eye ended in hilarity – though as he might have been blinded, we didn’t laugh.