Agatha Christie on the Horrors of Family Christmas
Text Erika Ruonakoski | Image Pauliina Mäkelä
In Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, an old man invites his grown-up children to the family mansion for Christmas. Old grudges are very much alive, though, and on Christmas Eve, the servants can only state that the house is not exactly filled with “a nice Christmas spirit”. Is Christmas, in essence, a hell people create for themselves and others?
The text contains spoilers from Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot’s Christmas.
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (1938) tells the story of an unfortunate family Christmas. Simeon Lee, a rich but devilishly malicious old man, invites his four sons and their spouses to his house: Alfred and Lydia, George and Magdalene, David and Hilda, and finally the black sheep of the family, Harry. To think of Christmas as a celebration of good will is merely a joke for him, however: his goal is to sow seeds of discord and confusion among the family members and to enjoy the resulting havoc.
Christie exposes the relationships between the members of the family in all their wretchedness: a brother despises a brother, the father laughs at his children, and a son hates his father. Some of the women characters are gold diggers, who attempt to get “their share” either directly or through the sons, others devote themselves to their emotionally troubled spouses. Even the staff are not to be trusted. Is one of them a thief – or even a murderer?
As a Christmas story, Hercule Poirot’s Christmas brings to mind Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843), whose protagonist is also a rich but ruthless old man. Both Ebenezer Scrooge and Simeon Lee are totally self-centred; yet where Scrooge is stingy, Lee is generous. Unlike for Scrooge, it is impossible for Lee to repent. Before he even gets to see the seeds of destruction properly sprout, his throat is slit.
Hercule Poirot appears in Gorston Hall along with the policemen investigating the murder, adopting the role of an “unofficial consultant”. Earlier in the book, he has suggested that Christmas is a most opportune time for committing crimes. This is because gluttony makes you irritated and because during the holiday people who hate each other, have to feign benevolence:
“And families now, families who have been separated throughout the year, assemble once more together. Now under these conditions, my friend, you must admit that there will occur a great amount of strain. People who do not feel amiable are putting great pressure on themselves to appear amiable! There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honourable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c’est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy! […] If you dam the stream of natural behaviour, mon ami, sooner or later the dam bursts and a cataclysm occurs!”
“There is a special hell for those who try to regulate the emotional atmosphere of Christmas, constantly anticipating the reactions of this or that person in a particular situation.”
In this novel by Christie, however, nobody feels bloated after heavy Christmas fare, for patricide brings the celebration to a halt before it has even started. Perhaps rightly, John Curran has pointed out that there is not a trace of Christmas spirit in the book. According to him, “The Adventure of a Christmas Pudding” (1960) makes a much better job of conveying the holiday spirit. It is almost as if Christie herself is worrying about this lack of Christmas spirit, for the characters point out here and there that a murder takes all fun out of Christmas. Then again, we can ask if Poirot is not completely right when he emphasises the tensions at Christmas time: are those tensions not quite an important part of Christmas, emotionally speaking? Surely everyone is relieved when Christmas has passed?
In Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit (Huis clos, 1944), one of the characters famously states that “hell is other people”. Often this motto is interpreted as an ultra-pessimistic description of human relationships, but it rather refers to the idea that our relationship to ourselves is mediated through others. If I feel that others see me in a negative light, I may end up seeing myself that way and acting accordingly.
Simeon Lee is a destructive and oppressive parent, who does not hesitate to show his might. Insinuating that he might change his will, he shouts at his children:
“You’re not worth a penny piece, any of you! I’m sick of you all! You’re not men! You’re weaklings – a set of namby‐pamby weaklings. […] I’ll swear to heaven I’ve got a better son somewhere in the world than any of you, even if you are born the right side of the blanket!”
Lee says aloud what many grown-up children only suspect or imagine that their parents think. In the company of our parents, it is not rare for us to see ourselves as we assume that they see us: inadequate, failing to fulfil their expectations, wedded to an image of us as we were in childhood.
Generally speaking, we do not wish to see ourselves this way. Our past, our memories, accomplishments and failures are, of course, part of our lives, but to ourselves we are, to a great degree, action and orientation towards new possibilities. This is why it is liberating to be with people, who share some goals and dimensions of action with us, and distressing to be with those who only see what we have become in the light of our past promise. In his outburst, Simeon Lee questions his sons’ ability to transcend their situation as the privileged children of a rich man: they either sponge off their father’s wealth or dwell on feelings of bitterness.
Yet, even if the Lee sons have a terrible time, so do their wives, who try to prevent the family Christmas from blowing up in everybody’s faces. There is a special hell for those who try to regulate the emotional atmosphere of Christmas, constantly anticipating the reactions of this or that person in a particular situation. They scarcely have time to objectivate themselves through others, they are so busy preventing and putting out fires others have lit.
In Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, it is the servants who cook and serve the food, so these tasks do not burden the organisers of the party or the guests as happens in most families today. As regulators of the emotional atmosphere, however, Simeon’s daughters-in-law are slaving away rather than celebrating. It is no wonder that the return to everyday life after Christmas seems lighten their load. Luckily it will take almost a year before it is Christmas again! Perhaps it will be celebrated as far from the close relatives as possible?
Literature
Christie, Agatha. 1938. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas. London: Collins.
——. 1960. “The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, or the Theft of the Royal Ruby”. In The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and a Selection of Entrées. London: Collins.
Curran, John. 2009. Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks. London: HarperCollins.
Dickens, Charles. 1843. A Christmas Carol, in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. London: Chapman and Hall.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. No Exit in No Exit and Three Other Plays. Translated by Stuart Gilbert. Hacienda Heights, CA: Vintage International. (Huis clos, 1944.)
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