Peace, Love and Happiness
By Sherry Dixon
‘I am sure that we will all reflect that change has come – a black president and his family in the USA will be celebrating their first ever Christmas in the White House come next year’

AAH! The holidays are looming.  Gifts, cocktail parties, glasses raised, wine spilled, and families thrown together.  Now's the season when questions of right behaviour baffle us the most. "Elbows off the table!” “Don't chew with your mouth open!” “Don't lick your fingers!"  My grandmother insisted I use my manners.  The rules were uncomplicated and clear. Always say: "Please and thank you… and wait your turn!"  These things mattered, she assured me.  She seemed smart, even when she carried a wooden spoon and gave me cracks on the knuckles, giving me that stern look, which said, 'Don't you dare embarrass me!'

I know that I am talking about Christmas and it’s still November, but parties have started in the UK, even though there is a recession.  After all, life has to go on. But this year when I attend Christmas dinners, I wonder how many people I would see slouching over the table, slurping away on their soup, or even reaching across the table for the rolls. No “Please”; no “Thank you.”   I wonder if they never had a grandmother like mine to crack their knuckles when they made mistakes at the dinner table.  Core values such as table manners seem to have gone out of the window; people do not seem to respect the values of the good old-fashion teaching anymore.

Christmas holidays should be a time for fun.  Last Christmas was the funniest one for me.  I had just returned to England from the Caribbean and a friend invited me to a party. It was a speed dating party and I pretended to be a florist.  The venue was a posh bar and my lie was an experiment for a website she had started.  "What do you do for a living?" asked my first date at the start of our three-minute session.  A light bulb pinged in my head and I thought if I said I'm a journalist, he might not like me;  he might think I'm hard work.  How would he react if I said I did something simpler, nicer? "I'm a florist," I blurted out.  "That's sweet," he said.  By the time the bell rang to switch partners, he was drooling at me.  Well! Drooling at the florist!  As we swapped around, the lie escalated. By 9:00pm, I was opening my own flower shop; by 10:00pm it was a chain called CHEZ.  My new job had a strange effect on me – I was smiling more and talking less than I would have if I’d said I was a journalist. 

Non-florist Sherry is not so man-friendly. When I saw the movie, HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS, my first thought was, “It takes you 10 days?”  But that one lie brought out a totally different side to me and the next morning, when I logged on to the speed-dating site, I found that 12 men wanted to see me again.  Whilst journalist Sherry sent men screaming into the night, flower-arranging Sharon had bagged a dozen bachelors.

I polled my friends and they were unanimous.  All of them habitually lie to men; they flatter, deceive and fib on a daily basis.  They're worse than… well, men.  One friend tells her new boyfriend, "You're so clever" even though he can't spell and thinks Guyana is in Africa. Another one has spent many weekends going to football matches because she told the guy that she loved the outdoors.  She is now waiting for the right moment over the holidays to confess that when she said, "I love the outdoors" she actually meant "I love looking at the outdoors from a comfy sofa." Few women, I've realised, believe they're good enough for the man of their dreams. So, just like wearing padded bras, we enhance the bits we feel we lack. Is there any harm in it when we lie by omission, anyway?  At the start of relationships, we don't say: "I used to weight 13st" or "I have irritable bowel syndrome." Call it romance, or compromise; could it not just be seen as “trying to be a better woman.” I probably went too far with the florist bit, but for a lot of women in search for love, a few pragmatic ‘porkies’ are mandatory, and I’m sure at Christmas parties this year, there will be many more lies told. 

But for me, the lying game is over; I am happy to be plain old Sherry -- the mother and grandmother; the journalist and inspirational speaker. I have to be true to myself because, in the end, we are who we are. So what if the man who is chatting you up is a lorry driver -- so long as he has basic manners and knows how to eat at the table.  At least, he has a job, right!

I am going to enjoy having fun with my family, eating pepperpot with homemade bread for Christmas breakfast, albeit that I will be in cold London. Then we will all sit around and reminisce about things that happened to us along the way, laugh and be merry -- reflection is a good thing. And at some time of the day, I am sure that we will all reflect that change has come -- a black president and his family will be celebrating their first ever Christmas in the White House come next year, and hopefully their grandmother, who is living with them, will insist on them using good manners at that big table in the White House dining room.

Remember, no matter what your daily struggles or the morning news might lead you to think, the potential for happiness is all around you.  You just have to dip a toe in.