Glossip: The Christmas Storm

We’re already looking forward to Twixmas …

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“A lovely thing about Christmas,” says American writer Garrison Keillor, “is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.”

When putting together the December issue last month, no-one we canvassed about the best thing about Christmas mentioned the day itself, but the quiet days after it, when time stands still.

“Time collapses, deadlines dissolve, and you’re left in this weird, weightless limbo,” said GLOSS photographer Veronika Faustmann. “You can wake up and eat cookies in bed, call it a success, and no one cares. It’s like the whole universe shrugs and says, ‘Fine, do whatever – just breathe.’”

Author and GLOSS Books Editor Edel Coffey loves the sense of the world’s frantic busyness finally grinding to a halt. “I don’t get that feeling at any other time of the year – there’s always a sense of falling behind as the world carries on without you. Christmas is the one time of the year when most other people switch off too. Time feels endless, nothing is open, FOMO is obsolete.”

A Kennedy Affair author Emily Hourican agrees: “There is something very cosy about knowing that everyone has downed tools at the same time, that we are all reading novels in bed, taking long walks, watching films on TV in the afternoons. I find this very relaxing – it means I enjoy doing ‘nothing’ in a way that I don’t usually.”

Journalist and author Lynn Enright enjoys reading just-received books and envisions the perfect scenario: “It’s 4pm and I’m sitting on a sofa, reading a book I wouldn’t have thought to buy for myself – a celebrity biography, perhaps, or a book of short stories. I have a gin and tonic on the?go, and a box of chocolates?nearby, and it’s true luxury.”

Fashion stylist Catherine Condell, who produced the fashion show at THE GLOSS Gala at the RDS last month, marshalling 30 models on Ireland’s longest catwalk, says the best thing about the end of the year is when, on December 26, “the insufferable in-store Christmas music stops!” She also mentions “copious amounts of leftover stuffing, made to my dear mothers’ recipe, with everything!”

Writer Susan Zelouf, celebrated for her monthly Moodboard, sums it up poetically: “In the wink of a raven’s eye, it’s time to put away the jet crystal-encrusted black satin heels, the glimpse of toe cleavage at the low vamp disappearing into Daniel Green gold leather Glamour slippers. Winter solstice is reason enough to throw a party; the longest night of the year is a sleep away from longer stretches in the evening. Soon soon, the swallows will once again return to these shores, with stories of an arduous journey across continents, over deserts, above seas. Brave hearts, you remind us that we, too, are built to endure.”