My festive 5-a-day: the Brandreth rules for a happy Christmas
This morning on BBC Radio 2 I was sharing my Festive Five-a-day with my friend Jeremy Vine.
He said, “I take it this Five-a-day isn’t about vegetables?”
No. Much as I love a sprout and a carrot (and a satsuma, a grape and an aubergine, too), my Festive Five-a-day is the Brandreth Plan designed to ensure a happy Christmas at the end of a challenging year.
This is for everyone – whether you are all on your own at Christmas or with just one or two of your family. The plan works for everyone and isn’t just me being full of pollyannaish cheeriness (which my wife tells me can be a tad irritating): it has science and experience underpinning each element.
To maintain the health of mind, body and soul over the festive season you need to ensure you have all five of these every day throughout the festive season:
1. A bit of radio and TV – but not too much. Make everything you tune into an event. Plan what you’re going to listen to and watch – and don’t be tempted to sit there slumped, watching whatever pops up next. I have already chosen what I’m going to be watching on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. They will be proper treats. And tell your family and friends what you’re planning to watch in case they’re going to be watching, too. Then, when you call them for a chat, you’ll have something to chat about. (Memo to second daughter: Emily in Paris is just brilliant. Give it a go. You must.)
2. A bit of a walk – but mind how you go. It’s essential to get out into to the world for a walk every day. My wife and I aim for an hour’s walk – that’s around 6,000 steps at a pleasant pace. As you walk look up and out. The great Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology, studied the history of his patients and found that those who looked up and out – who took an interest in nature and art and the world outside themselves – were much happier than those who looked down and in. That said, be careful as you go. At the weekend, on our walk I was so busy looking up I tripped on the root of a tree and fell on top of my wife who landed flat on the pavement – and broke her wrist. (Shout out here to the A & E Department at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital: they had her arm in plaster inside an hour. And it’s a fun Christmas plaster, too – see my Twitter stream @GylesB1 for a picture.)
3. A bit of reading – but steer clear of the news pages in the paper: they’ll only get you down! Read a book – and read for pleasure: Jeffrey Archer, Agatha Christie, P G Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle: turn to the authors you know you enjoy. I played the part of Scrooge in an online theatre show this Christmas: it sent me back to the original book by Charles Dickens. The film and TV versions of A Christmas Carol are great (especially the one with Alastair Sim and the one with the Muppets), but the original book is even better. Read to yourself for an hour every day – and, if you get the chance, read out loud as well. I regularly read to Nala, the neighbour’s cat who lives with us. You could read a bedtime story to one of the grandchildren via Zoom. Why not?
4. A bit of mind work – exercise those little grey cells. Radio and TV are stimulating, and they can be entertaining and good company if you’re on your own, but listening to the radio and watching TV are essentially PASSIVE experiences. You need to keep the brain ACTIVE over Christmas. The brain is a muscle: if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. Soduko, crossword puzzles, quizzes – they will get the mind working. Best of all: learn a poem by heart. There is a mass of research to show how learning poetry by heart keeps the synapses supple and the brain buzzing. Older people often think their memory isn’t what it used to be. Not so. It’s the RECALL that’s a challenge. There is so much in the computer you can’t summon it to the surface as swiftly as you’d like. But the good news is: your memory’s just fine. You grow as many new cells in the hippocampus – the part of the brain that looks after memory – in your seventies as you did at seventeen. Pick a short poem – perhaps an old favourite that you learnt at school – and learn it, little by little over the holiday season.). Learn two lines of poetry a day – anyone can do that – and by New Year’s Day you can have learnt a sonnet! (I’ll put a couple of ideas for poems to learn in the postscript.)
5. A bit of fun and games – it’s Christmas after all. People need people, so over Christmas make sure you make contact with someone somehow every day. Give the person you’ve been meaning to call all year the call you’ve been meaning to give them! Make sure you make or take a call every day – and why not play a Christmas party game with them, on the phone or via Zoom. Zoom Charades – why not? The Parson’s Cat on iPhone? Oh yes! Do you know Buzz-Fizz? It’s a ridiculous game, but you can play it on your own, or with one other person or with a group. It’s the game where you count from 1 to 100, saying Buzz instead of three and multiples of three, and Fizz instead of five and multiples of five, and Fizz-Buss for multiples of three and five. One, two, fizz, four, buzz, fizz, seven, eight, fizz, buzz, eleven, fizz, thirteen, fourteen, fizz-buzz …. It’s as ridiculous as it sounds. That’s the joy of it!
Those are your 5-a-day. Simples, eh?
Make a SCHEDULE for every day so that you have definitely got time for all five. Stick your timetable on the fridge.
Jeremy said, “That’s fantastic, Gyles. Those are the things you should do. Are there any don’ts?’
Yes – don’t stay in your jimjams all day. Get up and get dressed. Get out and get going. If you’ve got a Christmas jumper, put it on. If you’ve got party frock, Christmas day is the day to wear it. Dress us to look special – and you’ll feel special. It works. (If a middle-aged bloke with a pony-tail can dress up in funny trousers and a spangly top hat and win Strictly, you know a fun outfit makes sense!)
The other “don’t”s are really “do”s.
+ Don’t think about yourself – break the mirror. Look up and out, not down and in.
+ Don’t forget to count your blessings. We have three children and five grandchildren. We won’t be seeing them at Christmas, but we know where they are and we know they’re well. Our youngest grandson, Kitt, will be 5 on Christmas Eve. Three years ago he was having chemo at Great Ormond Street. Now he’s fighting fit!
Count your blessings . . . perhaps that should be the one extra to add? You can do that in bed at the end of the day. After a bit of radio and TV, a bit of reading, a bit of a walk, a bit of mind work, and a bit of fun and games . . . count your blessings - and you’ll get a great night’s sleep. I promise.
HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
PS
Here’s the short poem I’m learning for Kitt:
“Snowball”
by Shel Silverstein
I made myself a snowball,
As perfect as could be,
I thought I’d keep it as a pet,
And let it sleep with me.
I made it some pajamas,
And a pillow for its head,
Then last night it ran away,
But first - it wet the bed!
And this is the first verse of the poem by Christina Rosetti that Jeremy and I tried to remember together:
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
And here are two more of my Christmas favourites:
“Before the ice is in the pools”
By Emily Dickinson
Before the ice is in the pools—
Before the skaters go,
Or any check at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow—
Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me!
“Music on Christmas Morning”
By Anne Bronte
Music I love - but never strain
Could kindle raptures so divine,
So grief assuage, so conquer pain,
And rouse this pensive heart of mine -
As that we hear on Christmas morn,
Upon the wintry breezes borne.
Though Darkness still her empire keep,
And hours must pass, ere morning break;
From troubled dreams, or slumbers deep,
That music kindly bids us wake:
It calls us, with an angel's voice,
To wake, and worship, and rejoice.