OK Zoomers: how to make Christmas together when you are apart

Talla Luke Edward

My whole family lives in England, so I never had to consider sharing Christmas with anyone not close to me. This year, however, things will be different for many of us and the act of communicating with loved ones beyond will be an idea we need to think about properly. My partner Duncan ‘s family live planted in Scotland – we don’t see them at Christmas at all. So how do we share the joy?

I love the idea of ​​Zooming as we set up our Christmas table. This is our favorite part of the day, when we spoil the cupboards for glasses, plates, plates and love candles.

I also like the idea of ​​posting Christmas stockings. When we celebrate in Scotland, socks were something, and it would be nice to pay back the kindness with our own versions full of things that we plan to do here in the Cotswolds, such as strawberries. , chutney, biscuits. . . A taste of Christmas, and perhaps the next best thing to share a meal together?

I also love making my own cards. A little thought and effort is always valued, and this year we value it more than ever.

Luke Edward Hall is a Home & Home column writer

Edwin Heathcote

Screen chats can run dry, stop non-stop, pause and try a smooth joke. So instead of just talking, why not enjoy the cultural form created for the screen? Try sharing a movie through a platform like Netflix Party – watching something together, apart.

In my youth, Christmas TV – great movies, special comedy shows and junk mix shows – was the big thing because of the element of shared experience. Everyone was watching at the same time, family and nation.

An endless landscape of Christmas movies is slow to move through, pretty grim, but I find something strange moving.

Billy Wilder An Apartment (1960) is the perfect picture of physical America at its slowest and most hypocritical level, and one man ‘s efforts to hold out for average. It’s an amazing life (1946) traveled the same area, small business against monopoly capitalism, while Scrooged (1988) do something similar for yuppie time. And who couldn’t enjoy it Christmas Carol Muppet (1992)?

Although it’s not a Christmas movie, Groundhog Day (1993) seem like a perfect end to this lost year in which one day has melted into the next. There is pain, cynicism, repetition of mind and, ultimately, repetition. All frozen by snow and the warm warmth of mankind. Thank God we can return to a happy ending.

Edwin Heathcote is the architectural writer at FT

Fox Robin Lane

Notice what the gardening books say. Warmer winters mean that late Christmas outdoor planting is still possible in late December frosts. Buy some last minute narcissus and tulip bulbs and share them with the family (peternyssen.com is one good supplier).

Pour them out with holes to place the bulbs 3in deep outside, in flower beds for tulips, under lawn grass for narcissi. Even the narcissi grows well into the next late spring. I always do and it’s fun to look back in April and remember the Christmas planting.

Robin Lane Fox is FT’s garden pillar

Madison Darbyshire

Zoom is not designed for Christmas in families that from time to time, sometimes for years, do not talk to each other. Zoom does not have a grudge function, where, instead of talking directly to the person you are trying to throw images out of your body, you can control a neutral intermediary – try telling you tell Aunt XYZ that she needs to take the heartbread out of the oven, or tell her cousin ABC that they have icing on their chin.

Zoom break rooms are not the right place for sisters’ cathartic false graves that rule pyre decades of tedious conflict. These relationship tricks, complex and detailed like an elegant filigree, are part of a family Christmas.

They can add to the joy of the season, building explosive fights to clear the air so they can all come back to the table softer than before. These are as much a part of each other’s heritage as the return of old Christmas movies.

Feelings run high over the holidays, and this is where Zoom calls. This isn’t my first Christmas on screen – I’ve been separated from my family in the US for four of the last five Christmases. Four years ago I said goodbye to my grandmother, my best friend, with FaceTime on Christmas Eve, separated by an ocean and, as of now, feeling like an extra part with no one to hold on to when the sun fell. grief down.

There has been celebration too. A year later I came into a family Christmas to find out that everyone was crying with a smile that my other grandmother, sick with dementia, had been overjoyed by the same gift 10 times in 10 minutes. This is the first Christmas we will have without him, our longtime family peacemaker.

Our family, scattered from London to Hawaii, need to get back the rules of communication. This may be Zoom’s Christmas gift. We are brought together, face to face, pushing most out of an hour. Zoom makes storming away a little harder, a little less necessary. And it might bring back together just a little simpler.

Madison Darbyshire is an FT sales investment reporter

Sine Perrone

The key to a reasonable video call is a comfortable seat: with all my family living on other continents, this is something I learned over several years of virtual reality. So instead of sitting in a hard chair with dinner after Christmas dinner at my elbows, I’m going to use the movement for “botany”.

This is just an interesting way to describe an armchair surrounded by houseplants: a set piece from those showing off their collections on Instagram, it’s also a colorful background for catchups. Swiss cheese plants, weeping figures and large palms can be lit with fairy lights.

This isn’t a permanent arrangement, so don’t worry about your jade plant getting enough light – just pack the plants tightly to achieve that lush floral look.

Alternatively, make simple swags from pieces of garden ivy (Hedera helix or Hedera colchica) wrapped around a thin green garden or flower wire and use these to decorate your back. Baubles, ribbons or candy canes cover a level of instability like flowers, and I speak from experience.

Jane Perrone is a gardening writer

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