12 Days of Christmas: Silver Tinsel Nostalgia

Is it weird that my mind’s Christmas collection is not all naked memories? The one on repeat is actually in film.

It’s a decade-old memory of me watching a video taken on Christmas morning. I’m not even the one doing the recording, though I do feature. On a secluded farm somewhere along the Eastern Cape coast, eight of us are huddled in a lounge draped in silver tinsel, snowed in by heaps of torn wrapping paper, cups of coffee and precious items from our wish lists. My uncle is christening the 1.2 megapixel camera that I had spent the year begging my parents to get me. He’s spanning the room, doing terrible impressions in brief interviews with each of us in tow.

I’m not sure why it’s this particular memory that keeps returning to me, and, to be honest, I feel a little robbed that I can’t recall actually being on the other side of the screen. There’s something unnerving about how I don’t remember much else of that day either. At 13, there would not have been any alcohol to blur my memories – at least to my parents knowledge. We definitely started with church, then returned home for presents, followed by an afternoon of home-cooked food, endless conversations and laughter that got louder and louder as the sun sank lower and lower. It’s a day always bubbling over with love and thanks-giving, made more magical by the carefully chosen decorations: gold and silver bells, bright red stockings and Lindt chocolate balls.

We are a family of cousins and second cousins, aunts, uncles and half aunts and uncles. The vast branches of this family tree means that very rarely is it possible for us to all be together, and 2010 was unfortunately not one of these rare occasions – but there were enough for a full house. Back then, Gramps had not yet known about the cancer in his blood, the cracks in Mum and Dad’s marriage were barely visible, no one needed to move away for work. It was good.

Too much happens over a decade. The kids grow into their own, parents learn to let go; on top of individual obstacles, there are also those curve balls that life throws so viciously at you. Planned holidays might turn to trips to hospitals instead, the Christmas gift list might have to be a little shorter. Some years it feels really shitty to knock aside the 365-day rollercoaster to celebrate a holiday that is more commercialised than sacred. Other years, it’s the perfect excuse. There’s some relief in being able to set aside the stress of our lives to be little kinder and a little closer to our nearest and dearest during the festive season – it’s a necessary constant that helps the stress dissipate to a tolerable size for when eventually the Christmas trees come down.

Ten years later and no one lives on that secluded farm anymore, Gramps is not the only one gone, Mum and Dad are divorced and we are all one too many miles away from each other.  Everything has changed. Yet everything important has remained the same. Moments when life clips our heart strings are often impossible to mend but there are also those magical moments that take you completely by surprise and start to tie on new ones, ones that are stronger than the last.

Despite the difficulty of 2020, there have been many magical moments. Some have pushed me beyond my comfort zone, some have been as mesmerising as a walk in a new park. I’ve been woven into the lives of beautiful people, and cut out of others. Through it all, these moments have been like strands of silver tinsel, adding a little shine to the spaces that need them most.

So I still believe in the beauty of Christmas, with all its mistletoe and infinite fairy lights that glitter the streets at night. Maybe it’s a little childish, considering the hardship that is in desperate need of attention underneath it all, but maybe it’s the gorgeously decorated excuse to believe that the next year will be better.

The irony of how this festive season will imprint a different kind of screen time onto my memory is not lost on me. I’m never going to possess the power to hit rewind on the last 10 years to take me back to that moment in the lounge, surrounded by family and silver tinsel, and despite the achy grip of nostalgia, I don’t think I want to. This Christmas I celebrate the journey that brought me here, those who held and helped me along the way, and poured so abundantly a love I will never deserve.

No matter what life throws at us the 359 days prior to Christmas, there’s something inherently hopeful about December 25; a reassurance for a few waking hours that if you can make it through what you did this year, you’ll be okay for the next. Hold onto those high hopes…

even if you just don’t know.


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Written by Dan Champ

In March, I moved to London with the intention of kicking off a career in journalism; however Covid happened. Now I am an Online English teacher who travels vicariously through my students.

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