I can't stop thinking about Xmas

Like most kids from the culture I grew up in, I loved Christmas.

But there was something about Christmas 1993 that, as it was approaching, really got under my skin.

There are a couple of reasons for this, which I’ll go into as we go along, but to start with I just want you to know that Christmas 1993 really — and I mean really — brought out the side of me that loved writing schedules. I became a kind of military sergeant.

I was twelve, by the way, and there I was, several weeks before Christmas (still November in fact) drafting out the first of what would be a series of schedules — or perhaps visions is a more accurate word — of how I wanted Christmas morning to play out.

Brace yourselves for a very early start.

The precision of 5.32am is quite something!

And notice how in this first version, I waste no time between opening my eyes and opening my presents. I give myself two minutes to get out of bed, get my mother (I assume), and get downstairs.

I’m also scheduling time to “mess about” with my presents, including a 7am bike ride (!) (when it’d still be dark, good plan), and making time to go and “compare stuff” with my two friends who lived on the same street. I got this, what did you get? etc, all before going round to my dad’s, who lived a couple of streets away, at 10am.

What a Christmas morning go-getter!

But then a few days later I felt the need to amend that first schedule, this time paying more attention to what I’d be doing before waking my mum up. And if you thought the 5.30am wake-up was early…

It’s nice to see I’m scheduling more time for me, in which I will go to the bathroom, then get dressed, then “hair done” — whatever that means. I actually think I was still with perm at this point, so it probably meant putting some mousse on and scrunching the hair up to get those curls maximised.

But it seems that schedule wasn’t quite right either. I needed another. A more finely-tuned one. With even more things to do before waking my mother up.

Written with 25 days to go until Christmas, this one feels like a masterplan. It elongates the prep to 45 minutes, really stretching out the experience and making sure I’m as ready as can be for the day ahead.

It still very much takes place in what most people would say is the middle of the night.

What I like the most about this one is, of course: “Sit on bed and say a prayer.”

We weren’t a religious family, we didn’t go to church etc, but something I remember is that I did like to talk to God at this age. I actually address him directly in my diary in a few pages’ time, as you will soon see.

Nice that I’m scheduling a full four minutes to “get excited” as well.

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I think there were a few ingredients that played into this intense anticipation. I know I’ve said before that one of the things I really enjoyed about diary writing in general over the teenage years was that I got to re-live experiences that had already happened, even if they’d only happened a day before.

So I see I’m doing something similar here, but with a future event. It was all part of the Christmas build-up for me, it was fun and I got to use my imagination to place myself into this future experience — I mean, why only live it once when you can live it as many times as you like in your mind, and on paper? Especially before it’s even happened, when anything is possible.

Anything is possible: Keep that in mind as you now read my Christmas Eve schedule.

After the detail and precision of the Christmas Day plans, this one might be jarring, because it manages to be fantastically specific, while also giving no real information:

I mean, why did I feel the need to get THAT down on paper?

And just WHERE am I going, when I go “out” in between my meals? (sorry, I mean meals etc.)

It’s definitely giving “Teresa Stenson, you treat this house like a hotel” vibes.

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A little side note: when I shared a snippet of one of these schedules online earlier this week, someone jokingly asked if Mark Wahlberg had seen it. I didn’t get the reference so I had to look it up, and quickly discovered that Mark is quite the military sergeant with himself as well!

In fact, looking at his schedule, I definitely see some similarities with mine.

Although his wake-up time makes my 4.45am look like a lie in, I think both of our schedules are a nice blend of being specific and vague, and we both like to book in time to pray, and we both place an emphasis on self-care (or washing the self), and also eating.

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So what made Christmas 1993 so special, so promising?

I think there’s something to do with this specific age: 12, almost 13. I was getting into “fashion” (ahem) and part of my Christmas present was the opportunity to go into Doncaster town centre and choose whatever I wanted from THE shop that represented high fashion for us at the time: Tammy Girl. If you know, you know.

I also had a nice set of friends, and we’d all decided to buy each other something that year — probably with an agreed maximum budget of £1 or £2 each, which back then would easily cover the cost of a small wicker basket covered in cling film with some kind of fruity-scented soap in it, and maybe a bath pearl or two.

But the main thing that was different about Christmas 1993 was the number of people in our household. After 11 years of it just being me, my mum and my two older brothers, we now had an additional person in the shape of my mum’s new-ish boyfriend, who had recently moved in with us.

Even though there’d been a couple of serious relationships for my mum before this guy, none of these guys had ever actually lived with us. So this felt really different, and it made the run up to Christmas feel really different. In a good way.

If you read the issue about my dad, then you might remember that I’d never lived with two parents, and as much as I believed that I didn’t care about that, there was a lot of stigma around one-parent families. I felt envious, and also kind of fascinated, by the families I knew who contained both a mum and a dad.

Having said all of that, this guy turned out to be a bit of a dick. But I didn’t know that yet. In Christmas 1993, I liked him, my mum was happy, and this was as close to a “normal” family as I’d ever been.

And you know what, it WAS good.

I got some excellent presents, I mean look at this list:

I absolutely loved the Talkboy. It was a cassette voice recorder, which just felt like such a magical item in the 90s. I remember covertly recording my family talking, and interviewing my friends. And probably myself. Wish I still had the tapes. Apparently it was a really in-demand toy that year, because of Home Alone 2, of course.

And if you look back at the list you’ll see I also got a hologram?!

Yes!

Of an eye, on a necklace. These were all the rage. Like this:

(I wonder whose eye it was…?)

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I thought it would be nice to round up with this, written earlier in December ‘93, in which I suddenly change tones half way through an entry and start to address God himself, who I seemingly preferred to call Lord, or Dear Lord, which is more formal and therefore appropriate.

Channelling Tiny Tim there at the end.

So my friends, this might be my final newsletter of the year, but I will be back in January.

Before I go I just want to say a true and heartfelt THANK YOU to you all for coming along on this journey with me so far.

Writing this is a labour of love and it can feel really vulnerable too, so I appreciate all of your comments, shares, messages and even the in-person chats I’ve had with some of you from my neighbourhood, about this project. And I love that this is reaching so many people I don’t know too, if that’s you — thanks for taking a chance on a stranger’s old diaries.

However you spend this time of year, I hope it’s an easy one, a peaceful one, a hopeful one.

See you back here in 2024,

Teresa x