EXT 1 – CHRISTMAS IS A CONSPIRACY AGAINST WOMEN
Marian Keyes is one of the most successful Irish novelists of all time. Her work has been
published in 33 languages and includes a number of bestsellers. In this article for The Sunday
Times, she discusses her reasons for not celebrating Christmas.
SECTION I COMPREHENDING (100 marks)
L ast Christm as m orning, I awok e to a house
devoid of tinsel. No pile of alluring presents
twinkled beneath the tree. Because there was
no tree. No turkey marinated in an aluminium
bath in the shed, no visiting siblings slept in
the spare bedroom, no holly wreath hung
on the front door. If you’d just landed from
another planet and called at my house, you’d
have never known it was Christmas.
Because I don’t do Christmas, not even a teeny,
tiny bit. It’s not necessarily that I hate it. In fact,
when I can access those elusive memories of
being a child on Christmas morning, seeing the
toys under that sparkling, shiny tree, I feel I
might die of magic. What I am is a conscientious
objector. Not for religious reasons, but because
the festive season piles unbearable burdens on
people already at breaking point and I can’t be
part of it.
Looking back, Christmas was game over as
soon as I discovered the truth about Santa.
Without that enchanting patina, the grim
reality of the season had revealed itself,
becoming ever more pronounced the older
I got. By my twenties, I knew that Christmas
is not the most wonderful time of the year,
it’s the worst: the hubbub, the hangovers,
the non-stop bonhomie; battling through
crowded shops to buy presents for people I
didn’t like with money I didn’t have; scrubbing
the house for the arrival of visitors whose
hygiene standards were much higher than
my own; drunkenly wrapping presents at two
in the morning; overeating to the point of
self-hatred; being knocked off-kilter by bitter
squabbles that erupted from nowhere, and the
desperate aching desire for half an hour alone
in a cool, quiet room.
Worst of all was the misery of watching my
poor mother run herself ragged trying to
produce the perfect dinner – shouting and
chaos in a steam-filled kitchen, only for me and
my siblings to give a wide berth to the roughly
hacked slices of turkey because we’d all been
on the selection boxes since 5 a.m.
Eventually, I begged Mammy