The Magi had the right idea - getting away from it all for Christmas. Get on your camel, follow a star, and don't forget the duty-free gold, frankincense and myrrh. Historians have established that it is almost certain that the wise king who carried the frankincense to Bethlehem hailed from what is modern-day Oman.
It would be a neat conjunction to say that last Christmas I chose to go to his place in a reversal of the Magi tradition. But the truth is I escaped to Oman because I loathe Christmas.
It's not the build-up I dislike. No, I fall for that every year - the tinselled streets, the fevered shops, the frantic headlong rush into celebration. But then the day itself arrives. Since becoming an adult - chronologically, that is - I have found that Christmas Day inevitably degenerates into a sad day around a dead bird. Four p.m. on a Christmas afternoon is the bleakest destination I know - that grey post-prandial hour that no amount of seasonal cheer or alcohol can counteract. Call me a depressive, a killjoy. Send me to an orphanage or a homeless shelter; tell me how lucky I am to be able to indulge in such extravagant melancholia. But the fact remains - I can't stand Christmas.
So last year I decided to go somewhere where there was no Christmas. No expectations, no disappointment. And where better to go than a Muslim country? I have friends teaching in Oman so my sister and I agreed that it was the obvious destination.
The sense of relief was enormous. I felt like the bride who cancels the Big Day and runs off to Rome to be married. It is one of the Unwritten Rules of Life that you cannot opt out of Christmas at home. Friends and family will hunt you down, pinion you to the wall and demand to know your movements on the 25th. Conscientious objectors to the festivities are not tolerated. If you express a desire to ignore Christmas you are deemed emotionally bereft or seriously suicidal. But voluntary exile in a foreign clime is perfectly acceptable.
The decision to cancel a domestic Christmas forced me to be ruthlessly efficient. I did gift shopping for the family in one fell swoop - about three hours' work in mid-December. The notion that I could telescope the whole consumer extravaganza into one streamlined afternoon was a revelation. Gone were the sentiment and prevarication which usually accompany Christmas shopping expeditions. The gifts were chosen, wrapped and nestling under the right Christmas trees by December 18th as I stepped on a flight bound for the Gulf.
I cannot adequately describe the illicit exhilaration of travelling through the dark pre-dawn to Gatwick Airport a week before Christmas knowing that I was leaving it all behind. I still savour the lofty sense of detachment as we sped by the light-bedecked shopping centres, the plastic Santa motifs grinning from the street decorations, the Christmassy jingles emanating from the car radio as the taxi driver fulminated against festive revellers getting sick in the back of his cab. Suddenly, none of it concerned me. I sat back, closed my eyes and fantasised about sun, sea and sand, with not a flake of fake snow in sight.
We arrived in Muscat, the capital of Oman, in the graveyard hours of the morning. My friend, James, gallantly met us at the airport and we drove in his sturdy jeep through the balmy blue night. On the horizon great flares of flames belched from distant refineries.
Omanis are rightly proud of their road system. Here the car is king and the blacktop is revered. Belts of grass and plots of bedding plants dot the central islands and verges. Topiary is big in Muscat. The roadside trees are clipped into the shapes of animals and birds. The roads are adorned with triumphal arches showing images of Sultan Qaboos, Oman's benign dictator.
The roundabout is the apex of post-oil Arabian art. Each one displays concrete or plastic sculptures depicting scenes of Omani history or culture. There is a fountain made of gigantic coffee pots, for example, endlessly pouring welcome, or an antique boat cresting on a blue cement wave celebrating Oman's seafaring tradition. (Oman is unusual for a Gulf state in having an extensive coastline.) I felt justly smug. Here we were in the land of the magic roundabout with all cultural references to Christmas banished.
I was relieved to be offered a stiff drink when we arrived at James's apartment. Officially Oman is a dry state but westerners are permitted to drink at home and my host was one of many expats I was to meet who had extremely well-stocked drinks cabinets - and a licence to drink. Literally! Westerners have a little book which they take to the euphemistically named "retail shop" every month. Here they are allowed to spend up to a third of their income on booze as long as they drink the stuff in the privacy of their own home.
While I was downing my first whiskey, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a very grand and lavishly decorated Christmas tree standing unlit in James's living room. I wondered vaguely if I was going mad. Was I going to be haunted by spectral trees and cribs because I had shunned all things Yuletidey? Either that or the combination of whiskey and jet lag was making me hallucinate. I fell into bed and forgot all about it. But the damn thing was still there in the morning. Oh well, I conceded, James was a long way from home in a alien culture so I granted him immunity. Once that was as far as it went.
The following day we decided to explore the city. Muscat was rebuilt in the 1970s when Sultan Qaboos overthrew his father in a bloodless coup and brought Oman from its position as the hermit of the Gulf states slap bang into the 20th century. The city is a modern, white-washed confection sitting in the desert in the shadow of bruise-coloured, rugged mountains. But the atmosphere on the streets was ancient and distinctly Arabian. Throngs of Omanis wearing lilac thobes and traditional hats strolled through the souk. We scoured narrow alleyways where silversmiths and carpet sellers sold their wares amid the scent of sweet tea and the perfumed fumes of frankincense. And then it happened - Christmas struck.
Turning on to the city's main thoroughfare we came across one of Muscat's shopping malls. We stepped through the automatic doors - whoosh - and there in the central plaza gathered around a huge Christmas tree was a group of children singing "Once in Royal David's City". Overhead fringed streamers in gold and silver proclaimed "Merry Xmas" and "Season's Greetings". In the lifts piped muzak trilled Christmas medleys. There was a shop selling baubles for your tree, cards and wrapping paper.
I had to admit defeat. It seemed it just wasn't possible to bypass Christmas completely, no matter how far you travelled. So I surrendered. I went to the mulled wine and mince pie reception at the British Embassy, the carol service on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day my sister and I joined 14 expats of varying nationalities for turkey, sprouts and roast spuds on the roof terrace of a traditional house by the sea. A warm breeze was blowing. The temperature was a soupy 28 degrees. A hundred yards away the gilded minaret of a mosque peered down at us. A crackling loudspeaker in its eaves called the Muslim faithful to prayer while we pulled crackers and wore silly hats.
Of course there were tensions - mainly about the cooking of the turkey - but they were not mine so I sat back and gave in to the absurd inevitability of it all. Here I was, thousands of miles from home with the sun beating down and the sea crashing at my back, once again sitting down to a dead bird.
