My Top Five Christmases

A seasonal selection for the second entry in my new Top Fives series...

My Top Five Christmases (in Beijing)


5) Christmas in 'The Legit'

My first Christmas in Beijing wasn't well-starred: I was virtually penniless, and reeling from the recent death of my mother. But I suppose this made me all the more grateful for whatever consolations and distractions I could find. This was one of those Christmases where it really was the human (and animal) warmth rather than the material circumstances that made it: a relaxing, familiar environment, and affection shared between friends and acquaintances. I played Santa for some Chinese friends in the morning, had a Christmas lunch at the old John Bull Pub with my two best buddies, and then spent the whole evening hanging out at my favourite little neighbourhood restaurant drinking 2kuai beers.

4) The heartbroken Christmas

I had an arguably even shittier time 3 years later when great love of my life The Poet dumped me just before Christmas (and, as it happened, on the very anniversary of my mother's death). I was beside myself with grief, obsessed, crazed, depressed - I was virtually unable to sleep for 12 days. Then Christmas Eve rolled around, and I went out to get drunk at Huxley's - the "Haiku Bar" - my favourite hang-out of the time. It was a small but lively crowd (just right for such a tiny bar), with a number of familiar faces and recently-made friends (including a couple of young climatologists on a sabbatical from a university in Norway - you always used to meet unusual, fascinating people like that in Huxley's back in the good old days when my friend Jackson Bai was running it). And then - I forget quite how this came about - I took the climatologists (and maybe one or two other people) to a house party at the sumptuous penthouse apartment The Film Guy was sharing at that time (I really don't recall how I'd come to be invited, since I knew him only very slightly at the time, as a friend of a friend)..... so the excessive drinking (and the not thinking about her at all, for the first time in months) continued until 3am or 4am. I then went home and slept like a baby for 15 hours; when I awoke, I was starting to feel sane and happy again. No Christmas dinner for me that year - but lots of cathartic drinking!

3) The self-catering Christmas

Last year, for the first and only time in my life, I helped to cook Christmas dinner for a group of friends. Well, the hostess - my friend Dishy Debs - did just about all of the actual cooking, but I pitched in with a lot of the shopping and prep work (I would be delighted never to have to trim another Brussels sprout in my life!). That was the only time since I've come to China that I spent most of the day just hanging out in a family environment - being reminded how crazy young children get about their presents! It was a hectic but strangely revivifying day.

2) The bar crawl Christmas

Christmas two years ago was the first time in quite a while that I'd been able to spend a lot of time with my oldest friend in Beijing, Tony 'The Chairman'. We drank a lot of White Russians that week, to soothe the nasty tickly cough that usually sets in during the Beijing winter; and we enjoyed probably the most delightful - improvised - Christmas Eve I have ever known, lurching from one bar to another around the Nanluoguxiang area.

And the bestest one of all.....

1) The family Christmas

Aside from last year's Christmas dinner at Debbie's (which evolved more as a quixotic joint venture to try to tackle the challenge of cooking for 10 people, rather than being an invitation as such), the only time I've been invited to a friend's house for Christmas was four years ago. Just about everything about the occasion was delightful: the location (a gorgeous penthouse apartment to the south of Chaoyang Park), the food (all of us pitching in to help cook in an overcrowded but mostly good-natured kitchen), the company (two of my oldest friends in Beijing, their lovely baby daughter, the wife's cranky but entertaining mum, a couple of other friends.... and my girlfriend [yes, that was also the only Christmas here that I've got to share with a girlfriend: exchanging Christmas presents in bed with a very cute American girl I'd only just started dating was a fine start to the day]), the weather (the only proper White Christmas I've seen here).... yes, it was all just about perfect. Apart from the fact that my belly was about fit to rupture at the seams after unwisely eating a large Christmas lunch earlier in the day!

This year's was pretty good too - but it's hard to judge its long-term memorability so soon after the event. I think it probably won't have the resonance of these five.