Merry Christmas!

Well, it was a happy Christmas in the Asperger family. The happiest Christmas we have enjoyed in a long, long time. Pip doesn't like surprises, so I told him what his present was two weeks before the event. It was a shared present, a new, flat-screen, large (for us), family TV and I told him to keep absolutely quiet about it, so it was still a surprise to the rest of the family. As an extra Asperger's-friendly gesture, I gave him a copy of the specifications. There were enough technical words to keep him occupied and happy for days. The week before Christmas Day, I bought him an enormous TV aerial, to install in the loft. We spent the run up to Christmas cold, with an icy blast blowing through the house from the loft hatch, but with a really useful Pip blissfully running up and down the ladder, with screwdrivers, compasses and wires. The only slight upset was on Christmas Eve, when I banned access to the loft for the following day, on the grounds that I wanted to feel warm on that one day. Christmas Day was spent discussing the ban and how far it went, would it apply if there was a fire in the loft, if the roof started leaking or if Grandpa phoned up and demanded we all climb into the loft? But we were both too happy and relaxed to get worked up about each other and we took each other's responses in good heart.

It hasn't always been like this, even as a child, whilst I happily dreamed of presents, or sat up all night waiting for Father Christmas, there must have been tensions in the family. My mother was a wonderful, loving, kind hearted woman but she had an obsession about food and this could always lead to conflict. To her, Christmas was about food and being the perfect hostess, so there was bound to be a problem.

My father hated white meat and my sister and I were vegetarians. However, turkey is a traditional Christmas Day meal and traditions had to be observed. A huge turkey would be ordered months in advance and mum would take delivery of it in the days leading up to Christmas. Because my dad hated turkey, mum only cooked it once a year and wasn't very confidant. She also read every newspaper article about food poisoning, so she was only too well aware that under-cooked turkey can kill. In the week before Christmas, when other women were worrying about presents, my mum was panicking about the turkey. Dad used to preface most of his conversations with 'Oh my God, the turkey!' much to my delight. Mum didn't find it as funny.

The turkey had to be kept away from everything edible, to avoid cross-contamination. It would sit in the dining room, in splendid isolation on the table, carefully draped and with the door locked to ensure that it couldn't escape and run wildly about the fridge, poisoning us. The two days before the meal, my mum would regularly phone up the butcher, to confirm cooking times and temperatures. He was a distant family relative, so took mum's calls cheerfully, waiting until he next saw my dad, so they could both exclaim 'Oh my God, the turkey!' The meal was cooked with military precision, adhering to times and temperatures exactly, then adding another hour on, to ensure that all the bacteria, like the turkey, were burnt to a frazzle. Cooking would start at four in the morning, to ensure a good eight hours of high temperature roasting and for the rest of the morning, mum hovered about the kitchen, worrying about whether she had removed the giblets, if the silver foil was adequate, if some temperature-resistant bacteria had permeated the bird, if her timing calculations were accurate enough and if the rest of the meal would be adequate for the majority of the diners, who wouldn't be eating the turkey anyway.

My grandmother and great aunt would come over for Christmas Day, two very old, tiny ladies who both ate like birds, anyway. Their portion of this huge bird would amount to three or four slices between them. My mum, exhausted from the emotional upheaval of the cooking, was too tired to eat the turkey. My dad refused to eat the damned thing, so mum cooked a ham for him and we ate nut roast.

For the next week mum would dish up ever more imaginative meals involving the turkey, always having to include a 'dad-friendly' and a vegetarian option. Finally, fed up with all the turkey, she would hang out the remaining carcass for the local birds to gorge on.

And yes, we tried to tell her that none of us liked turkey, that she hated cooking it and that most of it was thrown out but she would always retort that you have to eat turkey at Christmas, it's traditional and besides, everyone else likes turkey so we shouldn't just think about ourselves. As we grew older, my grandmother died and my great-aunt was too frail to come over for Christmas dinner, but still she was adamant that everyone else likes turkey.

The turkey tradition was finally put to rest when my sister and I left home, the butcher died, leaving my mum with no-one else to reassure her and with her increasing ill-health, Dad took to cooking the meal. When she had done the cooking, food-poisoning had been a possibility but she decided that with dad it would be a dead cert, so she finally relented and agreed to a cooked ham.

My cousin, another neurotic housewife, maintains the family tradition. My aunt reassures me that in the past she has thrown the turkey away on Christmas morning simply because it smelt a bit funny if you shoved your nose right up its bottom and inhaled deeply. She now maintains an extra freezer full of emergency Christmas Dinner rations just in case she comes across another 'slightly odd' smelling turkey.

Christmas continued to deteriorate when I got married. My husband, Jay, felt awkward in social gatherings which didn't involve large quantities of alcohol and my parents felt awkward when their son in law drank large quantities of alcohol, ignoring everyone, becoming increasingly drunk, then falling into an alcoholic sleep on the sitting room floor. I found it easier to celebrate Christmas on our own, but it wasn't much of a celebration. My mother in law would send a Christmas card, including a present for Jay, my parents would send a card and presents for both of us. At first, I found it hurtful and expected Jay to mention it to his mother, then I told him he should mention it, then I just accepted it in mute, but increasingly bitter silence. He maintained that it could not be discussed with his mother, case closed. Over the years, I continued to buy my in-laws a Christmas present, but was never thanked and the present was always left, unused and unwanted at the back of a cupboard. The Christmas meal was spent in silence, like all of our meals and no-one ever came to visit.

When we had children, Christmas became more meaningful. However, I started suffering from extreme sleep deprivation, since none of the children slept through the night or even took daytime naps and I was continually fighting the desire to fall asleep. That problem was finally resolved when our youngest child, Alex became six years old and suddenly decided to sleep through the night. Jay also had problems sleeping and when he was asleep he was the windiest person ever. My nights were spent listening to, and smelling, his frantic guts whilst waiting for the children to demand my immediate attention. At four o'clock, Jay would wake up, wake me up, stomp downstairs, rush to an internet betting site, then wake up the whole household by a noisy trip to the toilet. Even now, two of his children call him 'the fart man'.

So, given that I was exhausted, Christmas was always a subdued affair. I would offer to make a lasagne for Christmas Dinner, since it was the only meal that the children would all eat which didn't involve tomato ketchup, chips and beans, Jay would grudgingly make a meal which the children wouldn't eat, then go back to nursing his whisky bottle in a quiet corner, then I would tidy up the chaos of wrapping paper, broken toys, half chewed sweets and plates full of dinner.

And all the time, I ached for Jay to talk to me, show me affection, tell me I looked good or that he loved me.

As the children grew up and Jay's behaviour became more isolated and anti-social, his need to drink and the obsession with horse racing became more noticeable. The last Christmas Day he spent with the family was enjoyed in a drunken stupor, making strange comments about how miserable I was, how boring Christmas was, how awful the children were and how miserly other people were. The next day was spent glued to the racing programmes, with regular trips into the town, to the bookmakers. I sat playing with the children, watching in disbelief as he shouted at them for making too much noise, for not sitting still, for having friends who knocked on the door and for breathing loudly. He left early in the new year, still angry with the family and still adamant that his behaviour was acceptable.

His daughter, Nina, celebrated him leaving but spent the next three years in therapy.

You would think that once he had gone, order was established, happiness was welcomed into the home, life carried on and I would start to enjoy Christmas. Sorry, I'm clearly too weird to do that. For the next two years, our Christmases were ruined by Jay offering the children wonderful presents, then demanding they see him, or keeping his sister's presents from the children because of some unspecified misdemeanor. I would be left frantically searching for the money to pay for a present which was so big and so wonderful that it took away the mean-spiritedness of Jay. Finally, I gave up, as Pip grew into the part of Scrooge.

Pip is incredibly self-centred and just forgets to even consider other people. He would contact Jay, asking for a particular present, then sit back and expect it. It never occurred to him that Jay regularly let him down and manipulated him through his presents. Two years ago Pip wanted a particular mobile phone for Christmas. He phoned up his dad and asked for it. He told me that Jay had agreed to buy it. I doubted that Jay would be so straight-forward enough to listen to Pip and act upon what he heard, but I left them to it and chose an alternative set of presents. At the time, Pip was interested in the army, so I bought everything from the local army surplus shop. He had an arctic sleeping bag, a tiny stove to fit in a rucksack, a water bottle, a penknife and the ubiquitous sweets. I carefully and lovingly wrapped them all up and placed them under the Christmas tree ready for the following morning. In the meantime, the present from Jay arrived and it wasn't a phone. Rather, it was sixty pounds worth of high street gift vouchers. Pip was furious.

Christmas morning arrived and Pip's alarm clock rang through the house. For the only time in his life, he got straight out of bed and marched downstairs. He opened his presents in record time, discarding them amongst the wrappings. His siblings and I woke up slowly and met on the landing to wish each other a happy Christmas, then started walking downstairs. Pip pushed past us on the way back up, announcing that he hadn't got a phone, the presents were shit and Christmas was shit. That set the tone for the rest of the day, as the weather was shit, the meal I had carefully baked was shit, his siblings were shit and I was shit. We dragged him to church and thankfully managed to keep him quiet during the service. When all the older members came up and wished us a happy Christmas and kindly asked what the children had received, Nina and Alex skillfully kept them occupied, chatting about sweets and toys whilst I ran after my incandescent Pip, grateful that most of the congregation was deaf, so couldn't hear the obscenities issuing from his cherubic mouth.

Looking back, that Christmas was painful but helped the rest of us come to terms with Pip's problems. We knew from first Jay's behaviour, then Pip's, that Christmas is a difficult time for people with Asperger's and we accepted that we weren't going to have that warm, fuzzy Christmas which other people seem to enjoy. We already knew that Pip couldn't accept life on our terms, so we couldn't expect him to behave any differently at Christmas. It was up to us to change and we did. Now, just as my mother managed to juggle three meals on Christmas Day, I juggle two worlds. They sit side by side and overlap periodically. I've learnt to enjoy and rejoice in those overlaps but not to expect them. I accept that Christmas involves change for Pip, which he finds painful, I accept that I cannot make firm commitments and arrangements in case Pip gets upset, I accept that Christmas has to be celebrated amongst our closest friends and family members, that he will probably sit in his room alone and that he will never appreciate the effort that we go to. However, on the occasions when Pip does interact or take part in something, I have to be thankful.

And as for Jay? Earlier this year I finally bought the last high street voucher off Pip and spent it on toothpaste I didn't particularly want. This year, Jay has decided that the children didn't even deserve a Christmas card and strangely, Pip is happier receiving no present than the wrong one. It really has been a blessed and peaceful Christmas here.