What I have learned from eight years of sober Christmas
The last time I had alcohol on Christmas Day was 2017, at the age of 40. This year will mark—excuse me while I count on my fingers—my eighth sober Christmas, enough to make a statistically valid sample. So I thought I would distill any wisdom I’ve gathered from the two slopes of the mountain into some observations for you, dear readers, whether you be wet, dry or merely moist.
We need to start with a sharpener of frankness: Christmas Day is stressful. However suffused with the (metaphorical) festive spirit you are, tradition and usage throw all kinds of challenges at you. It may be extended exposure to relatives whom you rarely otherwise see; the burden of buying presents, providing hospitality or preparing Christmas dinner for a crowd of noisy and bibulous guests; or it may be the sheer weight of expectation. We have all, surely, wondered at some point on 25 December if we’re having enough fun, if we’re doing it right, if we’ll come to regret any omissions or self-denial.
All of this is enough to turn the most sober among us to cheer-in-a-bottle. The paramount lesson—I really cannot stress this enough—is that, in drinking terms, Christmas Day is a marathon, not a sprint. I remember one 25 December in my late 20s, having returned to the parental home for the holiday, when I made a brisk and bravura assault on the sherry mid-morning to soothe the soul. By 1.00 pm I realised the sherry was finished, no-one else had been drinking it and I had a pleasant fuzziness but was by then caught in the tractor beam of drunkenness.
I’m not suggesting you should exercise any serious degree of restraint: I’ve never been a fan of organised fun and if you try to sit on your own shoulder like a Jiminy Cricket of booze you will simply be miserable and resentful. What I would advise is a combination of situational awareness and a plan.
In The Hunt for Red October (1990), which is by the way a great film for the Christmas holidays, Fred Thompson’s Rear Admiral Painter makes a profound observation to Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin): “Russkies don’t take a dump, son, without a plan”.
It is to their credit. The generous Yuletide drinker should have given the shape of the day some thought, and my advice, counterintuitive though it may be, is to embrace variety and keep your palate and senses surprised. I’m not one to be prescriptive, but perhaps some champagne to get going, a cocktail or two before the big meal, wine with your food, port or brandy as a digestif to stretch into the early or mid-evening, then find something to see you the rest of the way. Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to reach midnight or so with a semblance of dignity and no words uttered which cannot be unsaid.
As I’ve come to learn, however, the alcoholic cosh is not essential to endure Christmas Day. I say this with a few basic assumptions: that you are not a natural, Yule-hating grinch, that you are not at the bottom of some terrible well of despair, and that you can, at worst, tolerate your family and friends. Anything else is above my pay grade.
Obviously it must remain concealed if you don’t want to be widely loathed, but smugness is an important part of a sober Christmas Day. It holds true of any major celebration at which drink is widely taken: you are secure in the knowledge that no hangover awaits you, and you will also remember the events of the day with much greater clarity than your partaking companions. (I am not in any sense endorsing blackmail. I’m just saying that information is currency.)
If you have been accustomed to a pleasingly boozy and sybaritic Christmas, taking alcohol out of the equation will change the experience, and you shouldn’t let any staring-eyed evangelists tell you otherwise. It will be different, but if you allow your expectations to change too then “different” need not mean “worse”. Savour the clarity of thought, the absence of opportunities for regret, the freedom the following day from what our German cousins call ein Katzenjammer.
I do recommend finding something on a sober Christmas Day to enjoy that is unequivocally bad for you. I make no judgement, although it is strictly not City PM’s editorial policy to endorse freebasing, but whether it is a good cigar, an immoderate amount of chocolate or something involving feathers and sellotape of which you do not wish to speak further, you need that grain of guilt like the grit in an oyster to give you a truly rewarding day.
After all, what better tribute to Our Lord Jesus Christ could you pay than saying with a degree of glee “I shouldn’t really be doing this?”
• This article about sober Christmas was by Eliot Wilson, writer and historian; Senior Fellow for National Security, Coalition for Global Prosperity; Contributing Editor, Defence on the Brink