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'I picked up the “Lit Crib” box and just as I reached the top of the stairs, the bottom of it fell open, (the twenty year old cellotape finally disintegrating), and hundreds of cheap, glittery baubles tumbled down the stairs. We added to them every year. In a magazine I had once read that you should buy one, “special” tree decoration every year to remind you of that specific year. Who lives like that? As I saw the multicoloured crap of our Christmas past bounce down the stairs like dozens of jolly weebles I suddenly became absolutely infuriated. Here I was, again, putting up the effing decorations on my own while Madonna was flying high in her leotard, and my husband was content to sit in front of the television for the rest of his life, and my lazy children would be squeezing out any last bit of energy the menopause had left me with.'

Mammy loses her crap over Christmas.

You're welcome!

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Christmas can be hard - not least because it is all about those we love - and those we - er - don't......

'The truth is all the decorating, and cooking and shopping and glittery table dressing is so often used as a distraction for the main business of being with our family. Not the favourite sister, or the adored children – but the extended family. The mother-in-law who makes better gravy than you, the verbally incontinent uncle, the vegan cousin who has to be especially catered for, the sibling you haven’t seen since last Christmas when he got into a drunken fight with your husband after an argument playing Family Fortunes.....'

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