So this is Christmas…

Is there anything more festive than falling asleep after your dinner and thinking that you might never wake up again? The Christmas coma; what a feeling.

I don’t know how your house looked come 3.30pm on the big day, but, if you’d peeked through our window, you’d have thought a bunch of smacked-addled soldiers had booted down the front door down and opened fire on the whole family.

Lifeless bodies, splattered in gravy and cranberry sauce, were strewn on surfaces, both hard and soft.

Limbs hung over sofas like decaying branches ready to fall.

A child, full to the brim with Yorkshire puddings and blackcurrent dilute, lay crumpled in the corner like last year’s discarded doll.

I swear to god, our living room looked like a mix between a heinous still from the aftermath of a massacre and a backstage scene at the World Speed Eating Championships. It was unadulterated Christmas carnage! In saying that, despite the swollen stomach, gridlocked gut and general digestive destruction that comes with the festive feed, I love the guiltless gluttony permitted at the end of December more than I love just about anything else.

Health professionals, the fruit and veg industry and the feedback of our own bodies are forever trying to make us feel bad about what we eat and how much of it we put away.

In normal circumstances, in the conditions that exist beyond the borders of the festive bubble, whether to take dessert or not is by no means a straightforward question. The pudding problem is riddled with potential pitfalls.

“If I eat this dessert, I will enjoy it while it’s in my mouth, but then I’ll feel bad afterwards,” you reason, as you stare contemplatively at the cheesecake.

“On the otherhand, if I don’t eat it, yes, I’ll feel ashamed of myself later, but I won’t get to eat the cheesecake right now…”

What a minefield!

However, at Christmas time, a total ceasefire is called on such internal conflicts. Your conscience lays down its guns, self-control heads on holidays, and every impulse is crowned the unchallenged king.

“Sure, why not, it’s Christmas!,” you say as you sweep the empty trifle bowl onto the floor to make room for the plate of banoffee pie that is making its way toward you.

“I made that base by mixing peanut butter with real butter,” the chef says proudly as he slaps a slab down in front of you.

“Good man yourself, Tom, and, while you’re on your feet, ye wouldn’t throw me over a cup of tea, a can of stout and a hot totty… That ham has put a wile drought on me.”

Because, just as the food comes guilt free, so does the drink.

It is wonderful to watch people’s personalities change, their usual inhibitions vanish, and their better, more hedonistic, epicurean instincts come out.

Craic-killing phrases like ‘too early’, ‘I’ll wait until later’ and ‘I had my fill yesterday’ give way to ones like ‘aye, go on’, ‘there’s plenty in the fridge’ and, my personal favourite, ‘I don’t go to Mass all year round to sit and act the saint on Jesus’s birthday’.

Now, compared to some families, our house is not a big saucing one on Christmas Day. Nevertheless, I still had several Baileys and as many hot whiskies drank by the time the sun managed to penetrate the sheet of grey that blanketed the sky this Christmas Day.

And here is the best bit about it all… we are still right in the middle of it!

As I sit in work today, I know that there are some people still lucky enough to be on their holidays, but who are starting to take their fortune for granted.

“Ye get scundered sitting about,” they’ll be saying, as their more clear-sighted relatives breeze in and out of the living room.

To all those tempted to start wishing the days away, I implore you to search for some perspective: Imagine yourself in three weeks time when you’re back in the canteen, inhaling another round of tuna sandwiches so that you can get back to work on time, and ask that person what they would do to be returned to the land of turkey and ham where only a month ago they roamed…Then get yourself straight back out to that fridge, make a sandwich, crack a can, and fulfil your festive duty.

This is Christmas – party on. There will be plenty of time to pay your penance in January.