’Tis the season to be jolly, unless of course you hate Christmas. Like Marmite, it wasn’t an occasion I cared for much; family dysfunction and this most twee of festivals are not a happy pairing. Christmas was a sore point underscoring absences and pain I was still grappling with. Becoming a Scrooge seemed an inevitability.

Bah-humbugging my way through November, when Christmasphiles become ever more vocal about their planning for the big day, was necessary protection. To counter the mirth and good cheer I’d (in a manner not too dissimilar from a stroppy teenager) harrumph about commercialisation, the vacuity of sentimentality and the blandness of a traditional Christmas meal. I might, from time to time, remind my interlocutor that divorce rates doubled over Christmas as though it were proof positive of the season’s inherent awfulness.

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Only for the benefit of my younger siblings would I give all this a rest. They were too young and fragile themselves to withstand my observation that Christmas, like winter, is a time when poverty is at its starkest.

And this all held true until I had children. At first I resisted. Our Nigerian parents hadn’t raised us with the myth of Santa Claus and yet here I was, a functioning adult. My own children, I surmised, would grow up fine without the pretence. Then my son turned three, the age at which children desperately care about having a birthday party and, unfortunately for me, about yuletide too.

In the run-up to that Christmas and in the course of several conversations with my in-laws, it had become clear that not actively taking part in the Santa myth-making was tantamount to eating babies. Intimating that adults shouldn’t normalise the idea of a stranger creeping into children’s rooms unbeknown to them or us didn’t work either. I found myself press-ganged into begrudgingly playing along. No, I hadn’t heard of the mince pie and carrots under the bed tradition but yes, since these were available in my mother-in-law’s fridge, I would be OK with this being done.

And so ’twas the night before Christmas. My three-year-old’s excitement was barely contained. As he carefully helped me set out the snacks for Santa and his reindeer, I couldn’t help but wonder how I, the same person that had struggled to contain her contempt at stories of parents dipping shoes in flour to make footprints in the garden, had arrived here. Yet in that moment my son’s anticipation released me from my curmudgeonly self. His innocence warmed my heart and I allowed myself to ask, what could be so wrong with enabling him, however briefly, to believe that magic existed in this world?

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The next morning our son bounded in at ungodly o’clock to tell us it was “CHRISTMAS!” We mustered enough energy to appear enthused, if bleary-eyed. “Has Santa been?” he asked. We croaked that we didn’t know. Together we stumbled back to his room and peered under the bed. The mince pie was half-eaten, as were the carrots, and our son gasped the way children did in the Coca-Cola adverts of old. Wide-eyed, full of joy and wonderment he declared: “Santa HAS BEEN!”

That was the Christmas I decided I would embrace rather be haunted by absences I could do nothing about. No longer do I notice the exact moment in October when a Christmas playlist can be heard tinkling in the background, disturbing the poise of a Saturday stroll around Sainsbury’s. I am still not a fan of sending cards, and refrain from using “Santa only visits good boys and girls” as a disciplinary tool. But this year my tree was up and decorated on 2 December. Rainy weekend mornings have been taken up with making paper chains with my children while listening to George Michael, Frank Sinatra and Mariah Carey. In spite of the long list of reasons to hate it, gone are the days of dreading Christmas.

• Lola Okolosie is an English teacher and award-winning columnist focusing on race, politics, education and feminism