Creative Family Christmas - London

When I think about Christmas it is threaded with memories of my own childhood Christmases - some like smiling eyes dusted with glitter - others pricking at my heart like invisible shreds of broken glass. The sugar-coated commercial ideal of Christmas perpetuates the myth that there is such a thing as a perfect Christmas and a perfect family.

I like many people have a family that is split into fractions that make up my unconventional and unplanned family. I have the family from where I hail, my everything, my heartbeat, my sanctuary, my roots. I have my daughter’s father’s family who became my second family for the best part of a decade and yet as quickly as they were part of my world they all but disappeared - loyalties lie next to an awkwardness in the midst of busy lives, compartmentalised, until now. Olive’s Grandma and I made a trip together to the school family Christmas concert that made such a difference to me and to Olive. And in the last few years I have a new family to add to a modern patchwork - my partner Matthew’s family who were an unexpected gift who become more and more important to me with every passing year.

It isn’t the easiest time of the year but it is the one that resonates with almost everyone, the one that holds the most significance and the highest expectation. For my part I take a deep breath and try to conjure up as much magic for Olive as possible.

Our tree arrived in the first week of December. Sparkling with tiny white lights it had a staring role in my Christmas children’s fashion shoot for RedOnline. Its simplicity and rustic beauty gave a sense of winter wonderland to factory where we live in East London. It has been a hectic month with editorial and look book photo shoots, work on my new book and end of term concerts and award ceremonies. I work right up to the wire in my kids store before I can lock up shop on Christmas Eve. It makes being able to travel home to see my mum and stepdad in the wilds of the Hebrides for Christmas day impossible so I look for a dose of nature wherever I can find it. Each night when the dirty London air fades and our factory is tucked up underneath an ebony blanket I turn out the house lights and my fairy lit handsome tree takes me to another place - and there I sit.
| made an advent calendar for Olive - a succession of envelopes each one wrapped up in words of wisdom like “Magic” … lots of kids don’t have disney versions of Christmas … “learn how to make your own magic kiddo”. Inside a pencil to make up a colourful spectrum by Christmas Eve. As Olive opened the promise of each day one by one - more and more she wanted to decorate the tree and turn it from my forest beauty into the_real definition of a Christmas Tree - ”an evergreen or artificial tree decorated with lights, tinsel, and other ornaments at Christmas”._ I loved it as it was but just before our Christmas party I gave Olive her Christmas tree decorated with vintage baubles, glass parrots, russian dolls and ice skates and miniature mirror balls.

We didn’t go and buy new party dresses (not that Olive would wear one anyway) - instead we went to our local Indian Beauty Salon for Mendhi decorated hands. We had been steeping pears in vodka for weeks and like a bunch of eccentric scientists Olive and her happy crew served up festive Vodka and Ginger Martini’s.

Today has been a quite and simple one with just Matthew and me - his kids are with their mum and Olive is with her dad. We have taken it with open arms as a day to slow down. Smoked salmon breakfast, a Bloody Mary in a cosy traditional London pub and a walk in the park. It’s dark outside, we still haven’t eaten our Christmas meal and have only just opened our presents.

The best present - that after all these years finally I have accepted that this is modern family life. I know that Olive is ok - she is wrapped up with her other family - one that I have only seen in pictures but somehow that is ok.