Early Christmas presents

Our Christmas tree has a poo under it. I just found it. The 3-year-old is having some toilet training issues.

Fortunately it’s the only crap associated with the tree so far this year.

Christmas is just not the best time of year for many people with depression. Holidays add so much extra pressure to enjoy yourself, to be happy, and to socialise and drink and be generally a whole lot merrier than you can quite pull off.

This year I was really dreading putting up the tree.

Last year I was over the moon about it. I haven’t had a tree since moving out of home. It’s just not the done thing in share houses you know? Doesn’t go with the Dead Kennedys albums and won’t sit on the milk crate bookshelves and then you’re never home much and it’s just too much of a hassle and besides who’s going to see it anyway? Everyone goes somewhere else for the day so why bother?

But secretly I’d always wanted a tree. A big green tree that needs a stool to reach the top – not one of those stylish little tinsel things with tasteful mono-coloured decorations. I wanted gaudy with multicoloured lights and bits of tinsel scattered through the house. Nothing ironic about it.

Last year I shamefully exploited my child’s existence to finally get the tree. I pushed it home in the heat, perched on top of a glittery festooned stroller, in the middle of which my toddler sat like a small god surrounded by Christmas offerings.

I didn’t anticipate though just how reverso-miserable the whole exercise would be. It was worse I suppose because my expectations were so high – first tree, first Christmas when our son was old enough to know what was going on.

Things really fell over when I tried to take photos. I still have the pictures. They’re all of my son. None are of me. (I was behind the camera.) None are of my partner.

He’d snapped and yelled and stormed out. I’d cried.

It was a very depressing scene from a gritty film you wish you weren't watching. Think Mike Leigh and Mickey Rourke.

This year I expected zero. I made a time with my son to do the tree and invited my partner to be there if he felt up to it.

It just happened to be a good day for him. It just happened to be a day when he had energy to do stuff, even stuff he’s not really into.

For just a fraction of a moment there, somewhere between untangling the lights and hearing my son’s “Oh wow!” when it was done and my partner say, “Hey, that looks really good, thanks for doing that,” I had an enormous fantasy squashed into a nanosecond that everyone was happy at the same time and it was Christmas.

Much more corny midday movie this year (probably starring Mickey Rooney).

Luckily he still insisted on no photos. And of course there’s the Christmas poo, so maybe it's a bit closer to South Park and a lot more like a real life.

Flo