how to be poor and happy at christmas

an irrational optimist's guide

I haven’t had a lot to say on here lately which isn’t like me, so I looked back at my “stats” (which Substack provides in granular, terrifying detail) and realised it’s not the first time this has happened. Ever since starting this newsletter, going on three years ago, I’ve consistently gone a bit quiet in mid-to-late December. Part of it is that other stuff crops up. School volunteer commitments, the odd party or lunch, school concerts and so. But in truth, the deeper underlying reason for my lapsing into silence this time of year is the shame I feel over finding myself poor, yet again, at Christmas.

It sucks all the time, obviously. But this time of year it sucks like a vacuum.

Most of the year I don’t really care much. Like most kids, mine are prone to wanting crap they don’t need and I know I’d probably say ‘no’ to most of what they beg for even if I could afford to give in. We live in a nice, falling-apart house in an okay neighbourhood in one of the world’s most expensive cities, there are wasabi seaweed snacks and wine in the cupboard and with the help of friends and loved ones we even manage the occasional holiday. Apart from being plagued by Kafka-esque legal shenanigans, I don’t have much to complain about. But around Christmas, a kind of simmering low level anxiety starts to build at the centre of my solarplexis, eventually spreading out through body, radiating me out of the moment, making it difficult to concentrate on things like writing this Substack.

I might not look it or act it, but in material terms I am poor and have been for the past three Christmases running. It’s a condition enforced by circumstance: I have to be on benefits in order qualify for legal aid funding which means my income and savings must stay low enough to keep me eligible for government entitlement. I need to be destitute in order to escape destitution. Seriously. It took a while for me to accept this because up until then I’d lived a pretty charmed life. I’ve never been rich, but nor had I ever before experienced a real economic problem, i.e. one that required me to seek state-funded assistance. The first year after my marriage ended I spent the entire paperback advance for my last book in three countries on legal fees, the second year I spent everything I earned and then borrowed more from my parents.

It’s no exaggeration to say that qualifying for legal aid has been one of the biggest career highlights of my entire working life. Bigger than any book deal, promotion, nomination or bestseller list. The process took months, I was knocked back several times. The application is designed as a deterrent, like trying to obtain an outside-travel visa from the Albanian government in 1978. Legal Aid for financial remedy cases in the UK family courts is almost unheard of. The threshold isn’t just poverty but hard evidence of domestic violence, in the form of police reports, charity support letters, social services reports, etc. all of which I was able to produce, rather depressingly. If I didn’t have children I like to imagine I would have walked away from the court battle and my life savings and started over by now — found an empty white studio flat in Minorca with a single bed and a wooden writing desk. I have a good track record of surviving on my wits, after all. I don’t need much. I left my marriage to escape conflict, not to endure more of it. But the boys need a decent place to live and good schooling, which requires capital and income. I have no other choice but to press on for their sake. So it’s poverty for this Christmas and the foreseeable future. The best thing I can hope for is that there will be an end to it. In the meantime I’m learning stuff.

Being a poor in this country is like a never-ending rainy day spent playing a tedious board game of pure chance. Snakes and Ladders with no ladders and a single die that rolls only ones. It’s also like a job I didn’t want or aspire to. Specifically one of those flexi-back-to-work schemes for new mothers where you end up cramming an forty-hour week into three days for the privilege of getting paid shit in order to cut down on your child costs. A rigged system designed to bore and humiliate the player into subservience. Once you grasp that the aim isn’t to win the game but merely survive without falling off the board into the abyss, it gets a lot easier.

The learning curve for being professionally poor is steep except when it’s so flat your brain threatens to atrophy. In order to be responsibly poor in this country you need to be organised, rigorous and constantly on top of things. Especially as a foreigner, it’s essential to charm every jaded gatekeeper you come across with Erin-Brockovitch-style pluck (dazzling smile minus cleavage). There are spreadsheets and mind-numbing maths involved. The bulk of the role lies in proving your pennilessness over and over again by attending various interviews, filling out forms, uploading bank statements, support documents and support letters. Conversely you must demonstrate you are also trying very hard not to be poor, because becoming comfortable with poverty is grubby and lazy. It’s a fine and tenuous balance. Try too hard not to be poor while being poor and you might actually scrabble part way out of dire circumstances, which will send you and your children back down the snake’s pointy back end: Don’t pass go, proceed directly to financial chaos. Commence online form-filling.

Roll again: Oh hey look! It’s a one.

I have no extended family in the UK so it’s just me and the boys over Christmas. We have our own little rituals and routines now and we’ve learned to relish them them as a tight loving unit. The problem is that everything single gift, decoration, stocking stuffer, food, drink and sweet treat needs to be purchased by me and I can’t actually afford any it. I want my kids to feel normal but there is no bonus mother’s allowance for North Face puffer jackets and telescopes. Thank god for their unwavering faith in Santa. He’ll make it happen. The holidays are all about luxury and indulgence which is really just a fancy way of saying credit debt. Like any responsible poor person I will pay it off as slowly as I can, by which I mean fast enough to keep the bailiffs off our front step.

The circumstance which have brought us here are exceptional but the shame I feel about being poor at Christmas, is universal and standard. I could say ‘it’s not my fault,’ but what does that even mean? Are my circumstances really less of my own making than the crack addict’s on the park bench or the oligarch’s daughter buzzing overhead in her helicopter? Who among us is wholly responsible for the economic circumstances in which we find ourselves, whether good, bad or similar to that which we are accustomed? So much of everything we experience in life is down to timing and dumb luck — geography, health, sheer accident of birth play a far larger part than we like to admit. This is not to say talent, honesty, intelligence and hard work don’t matter, just that we tend to overweigh their importance, minimising the larger factors, when comparing our own circumstances to those of our neighbours. I am painfully aware that I have lived most of my life coasting the long soft end of a stick which has not prepared me well for encountering the short sharp end, especially at Christmas. Corporal punishment is out of fashion, but there is really is no substitute for pain when it comes to learning hard lessons.

I know the anxiety I feel this time of year is a luxury in itself, one that comes from of being born into soft circumstances and the expectation better things. One upside of this weakness is that I am irrationally optimistic to the point of delusion. My gormless-ness sets me apart from the vast majority of poor people at Christmas, both in this country and everywhere else. And it’s this same stupid innocence I want to preserve in my boys at all costs. The trick in difficult times, I think, is to resist cleaving to narratives of despair. The circumstances in which we find ourselves, at Christmas or anytime of the year, are mostly structural. We are born who we are and fortune is fickle. Having said that, agency also exists. If there’s a way in, there’s a way out. You learn stuff. I now know exactly how debt works: Pay it back voluntarily or prepare to have your car clamped.

To this end, on Boxing Day the boys and I will pack up and move into a generous friend’s empty flat to dog-sit for the rest of holidays while letting out our house to French and German tourists. We were meant to go to the countryside but plans fell through. It’s fine actually. The rental income will pay off much of what I will spend to make the Big Day a special event. If my budgeting is right, I’ll narrowly avoid being disqualified from legal aid funding. This will in turn enable my lawyers to keep spinning out court applications on our behalf, hammering hard-won rungs on a rickety ladder out of the hole in which we have found ourselves. I can’t protect the boys from everything, but godfuckingdamnit there will be stockings filled with sweets and silly plastic joke tat from China. Bagels and lox and champagne and orange juice. There will be a North Face puffer jacket and a telescope if I have to chew off my own arm to get them. My only real Christmas wish is that my children remain utterly clueless and spoilt, their materialism untainted by the reality of circumstances. Thank god for the magic of Santa.