Christmas Day in the Marr household began much in the same way as it has every year for the past twenty years, with all four of us tucked up in one bed to open our stockings. Over the years there has been less leg-room as the girls have grown, but we stick with it. It’s one of those rituals that ‘makes’ Christmas.
Before a single present was opened we played – as always – Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’; all 6minutes and 41 seconds of the Pudding Mix, the one in which George Michael whispers ‘Happy Christmas’ before the intro properly starts. That’s the signal that our Christmas Day can begin.
As George Michael was there at the start of our Christmas Day 2016, he was also there at the end, but this time there was sadness. Coming back in from a post port and stilton walk around the block, we heard the news of his death.
By the time I woke up on Boxing Day morning my social media feeds and the news sites I follow were overrun with tributes and posts of his tracks – everything from Wham Rap and his Carpool Karaoke to the best from his solo albums. Rolling Stone magazine had compiled a top 10 of his greatest tracks, and The Guardian had had two journalists working overnight to live-blog news and tributes from around the world. The consensus – unsurprisingly – is that George Michael was a musical genius taken from us too soon. And that 2016 could (in the words of most of Facebook) just go and ‘do one’.
George Michael was a star and I am sad to hear of his death. Wham and Michael provided the soundtrack to some of the best times of my adolescence; hearing Club Tropicana takes me instantly back to the Commodore disco in Stonehaven where we drank underage and danced, danced, danced. I had patent leather-effect white shoes (which I could patch up with Tippex and clear nail varnish when they got scuffed) and I styled myself on Madonna, from the messy blonde perm to the turquoise mesh gloves.
But just as I was sad to hear of the deaths of Bowie, Prince, Alan Rickman and the rest of 2016’s Celebrity Lost List, I am not grieving, not in mourning. My loss is more abstract; I can’t help but wonder if there might have been another great album or performance that we’ve missed out on, and there’s a realisation that another part of my adolescence is gone. Careless Whisper can’t have been the only song my generation slow danced to, but it’s always the one I think of. And I have a fair bit to thank it for.
The list of celebrities taken this year seems cruelly long but it’s not rational to blame the year. Globally no more people will have died in 2016 than is usual, it’s just that we’ve heard of some of them, and social media makes it more likely that we’ll discuss our memories. I spent Christmas Day half waiting for news of Carrie Fisher or The Queen. I shouldn’t tempt fate – there are a few days between me writing this and you reading it, and anything could happen.
People die every day. Many of you will have lost loved ones this year. A good friend lost her Dad to cancer the week before Christmas. My brother is a paediatric neurologist in Glasgow – he worked late on Christmas Day to admit another two seriously ill children into his ward; not all of them will see 2017. A Russian military plane crashed into the sea on Christmas Day killing all 92 on board. Air strikes in Aleppo led to more than 100 deaths over Christmas weekend; these deaths barely registered on our news channels, yet George Michael’s death got blanket coverage.
The death of a cultural hero is significant – mildly. It reconnects us with memories we thought we had lost and reminds us of our own mortality. But this is not our tragedy – it’s the tragedy of George Michael’s family and friends. Let’s step back and get a little perspective.
Let’s not write off the whole of 2016…
With celebrity deaths and strange (to me) political decisions, 2016 will go down as a year that many will be glad to see the back of. But before we write the whole year off as a ‘bad egg’ some good things did happen.
British astronaut Tim Peake spent six months on the International Space Station and wowed us with fantastic photos and stories. The Rio Olympics – in spite of worries about Zika virus and a green swimming pool – were a triumph for Brazil, and for Team GB athletes. And we heard this week that deaths from Aids and malaria are waning worldwide, and fewer children are starving.
On a personal note, 2016 was the year that that both our children left home. And in spite of some auspicious warnings, all of us have survived; thrived, even. Our job as parents is to give our babies, toddlers, children, then adolescents the tools and confidence they need to flourish without us. And in spite of a few hiccups along the way (and probably a few more to come) our chicks seem to have successfully flown the nest.
It has been lovely to have them around for the Christmas holidays – even more lovely that they paid us the compliment of bringing friends home with them, giving us more insight into their new lives. But I expect I’ll breathe a tiny sigh of relief when we deposit them back on the bus to university. Because lovely as it is to have them home, life without them is very excellent too.
This column first appeared in six SPP Group newspapers week ended 30th December 2016.
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