Every other Sunday, Slutty Cheff – cook, Vogue columnist, and author of the forthcoming Tart – shares her thoughts on food, culture, sex and the points where the three intersect.
When I talk to my friends in the lead up to Christmas, I realise that there is – with the exception of a few genuinely joyous little bastards – a common feeling that this time of year is actually pretty shit.
There is a significant sadness looming in a lot of us, but we are undercover, you see; we sink our feelings to the bottom of our stomachs and drown them in Baileys. We hide like humble heroes, letting the kiddies have their fun and the conceited couples have their selfie-stick snogs. We must be smiley and join in the fun because the festive people want us to, and the festive people always get their way. But why? Mark Corrigan once asked, “Why do the people who want to talk about things always win?” In a similar vein: why do the people who want us to be happy about Christmas always win?
Why do I feel sad? No idea. It’s weird because I am in a good place, and this year was probably my best year yet. In spring, I got a book deal; in summer, I got my own column in British Vogue; and in autumn, I fell in love with a great big hunk of a man. If there was ever a year for me to role-play as the leading lady of an obnoxiously romantic Christmas movie, it would be now. According to the classic Christmas rom-com narrative, I should be sauntering past street lamps in town squares, wearing beige cashmere gloves with my head wrapped in a cutesy hat, my calves encased in expensive brown leather boots and my lips coated in classy red. My arms should be entangled with my Hollywood hunk’s; my heels should be clip-clopping; and I should be knocking my head back in sheer joy and obnoxious laughter, the general crux of the joke being how amazing life is for a beautiful white woman when Christmas comes around. I feel stupid for not being happy, but what can I do? The sadness of Christmas overpowers me and my fellow grinches. We were born grinches, and we will always be grinches.
Instead of my movie montage moment, I stomp the streets of Soho and scowl at the sparkling lights. “It’s Christmas already? Here we go again,” I mutter. “Fuck’s sake.” I get barged by the big merry men in suits at their Christmas party. “Calm down, love! It was only a joke.” Piss off, you perv. I get on my bike to escape the damn streets and am nearly crushed to smithereens by a furry pink tuk-tuk blasting Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You”. The tuk-tuk passengers gleam at me as I cycle past them; the evil witch of the West End glares back. The happy young parents are with their chubby, ginger, bright-eyed boy squashed between their comforting thighs. The little boy is radiant with Christmas joy, enraptured by the magic. The poor son of a bitch doesn’t know Santa’s not real and his dad’s having an affair with his English teacher, Mr Smith.
I remember when I was about nine or 10, my mum collected me from school, and I said to her, “Mum, you tell me lying is really bad, so when I ask you if Santa is real and you tell me yes, well, if you are lying to me, you have sinned and you will go to hell.” I was not religious, just demonic. After questioning her for hours on the matter, begging her for the truth, interrogating her for a detailed explanation of the logistics behind the whole chimney, stocking-stuffing charade, she finally came clean and said, “FINE, FOR FUCK’S SAKE, FATHER CHRISTMAS ISN’T REAL.” And so it began. From then on, a little bit of Christmas spirit left my body with each passing year. Puberty arrived, and then boyfriends, and then family death, and then suddenly you’re an adult and Christmas is really just a big fat joke. Well, this year, the Christmas spirit is totally absent from my body. I have run dry, and all I want for Christmas is for it to be over.
Aside from my bumbling bitterness, the specific sadness of it all is hard to articulate. I suppose with those three days – Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day – most of the country pauses, and with that shift comes pure, unadulterated sentimentality and reflection on another year gone by, another family get-together where that person is missing or another new person has arrived. It is forced upon us to take a moment and notice the time passing, and it’s all happening too quickly. I want to be the chubby ginger kid again, and I don’t want to be reminded that I’m not. The sparkly lights and the businessmen in suits laughing make me feel like I should be happier than I feel.
Anywho! Let’s brush it all off, shall we, and keep going? Stiffen your upper lip and keep smiling through gritted teeth. It’s what we do best.
As always, food is the saving grace – as is sex. Snog under the mistletoe; doesn’t matter who with, just make the most of the additional warmth beneath your sheets. And eat a Christmas sandwich – it doesn’t matter from which supermarket. I am from a privileged world where I have a great big support network, and we can afford to indulge in gluttony and hedonism. For that, I am deeply grateful. I am grateful for smoked ham, good cheese, warm wine, cheap chocolate, candied fruit, bread sauce, turkey gravy, icy Baileys, Walkers crisps, stuffing sandwiches, and morning cigarettes.
We will conquer Christmas. Most importantly, we must surround ourselves with our community – the other nihilistic, apathetic, sad grinches. We can surround ourselves with friends who feel the same as us. We can gather together in the basement pubs of the city – the ones the festive folk avoid due to lack of tinsel. We can hide in the forests or in the parks, and like the Dead Poets Society, we can gather around a single flame and say the naughty things we shouldn’t say around the Christmas creeps.
Tart: Misadventures of an Anonymous Chef by Slutty Cheff
£17
Amazon
