There were no visits to meet Santa in his grotto, no dragging the kids around the shops, no big pub lunches with friends and their children. Instead, there was walking in quiet, thickly frosted nature
It was around my son’s second winter on this earth, and that stressful time known as the run-up to Christmas, that I really knew. He was autistic. My boy, who loved to flip anything on wheels belly-up so he could watch them spin, his little fat hand expertly rolling them faster. My boy, who spoke in long, elaborate phrases, many of them lifted verbatim from his favourite books and TV shows. My boy, who appeared not to notice other toddlers passing in buggies, but was mesmerised by carpet fluff, sirens, the moon. My boy, who cared not one fig for Santa, but who, when we dragged the tree into the house, shedding the customary trail of needles and pine perfume, rubbed up against it like a cat, embraced it as if it were a long-lost friend who had come for tea.
Autistic children hate Christmas, or so I thought. It’s the sensory overload. The unwieldy family visits seasoned with “melancholysteria” (a festive hybrid of emotions that tastes like purple Quality Streets, hungover Victoria Wood specials and childhood) when everyone is wearing silly hats and (mostly, surely, please God) trying their best. It’s the bewildering demand to sit at the table for hours and consume 5,000 calories of enormo-bird and suspicious items collectively known as trimmings. It’s the hell on earth otherwise known as the Christmas market.
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