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It’s certainly the festive season again, the house is stuffed full of food & drink just in case starvation breaks out on the one day of the year when the shops are shut, Santa has been arranged & the first batch of mince pies are no more, everything that can be covered in tinsel is covered in tinsel & the kids are becoming fractious as the big day approaches. It’s the time of year when the normal conventions are tossed aside & at any given moment the door can open to reveal people who in some cases have been absent from our lives since last Christmas, it’s nice to know that they’re still alive in the real world as opposed to Facebook & everyone agrees we should all meet up more often whilst knowing full well that bar weddings or funerals we’ll not be seeing each other again until next Christmas. It’s traditions like these that make Christmas what it is, the food helps & sometimes the drink helps more but there’s as much to be said for opening a terrible present as there is for the good ones, I don’t care what I get at Christmas, I want my sock supply replenishing & more Lynx than I could ever hope to use.

I love Christmas & the way it sets January up as the bleakest month of the year, even the inevitable tiffs & tantrums of the extended family will be old anecdotes one day, right now the house is full of children with high hopes for tomorrow morning, I hope it all works out for them as well. It is all different this year, everybody I know is struggling to cope with life in general let alone with Christmas & there are hard times happening all around, we’ve been lucky so far but the start of 2010 will still be tough for us. I’m not thinking about that here & now though, it’s already been a long day & it will have grown much longer before I can crash out & grab a few hours sleep before the inevitable dawn awakening, as traditions go it’s not one I’m keen on but that’s tradition for you, they can be bloody hard to change. I can’t wait to watch the kids open up whatever gifts they receive & even the trek around the family is something to look forward to although not as much as dinner is, if we’re not snowed in it’ll be fun & if we are then it’ll still be fun, we’ve already had a huge snowball fight & I really want to build a snowman, I don’t think I’ve quite got the hang of grown up yet.

There will be people all over moaning that Christmas is now just a vast commercial enterprise & they’re not wrong, they are however misled because if that’s all it is to them then the fault lies with them & not the shopping chains, anyone who has kids, especially young ones, knows full well that it’s one of the few times in the year when it’s possible to see the human race as better than the selfish sods we know ourselves to be. At a time of economic hardship we may have had to rein in the desire to spend like there’s no tomorrow but it doesn’t make tomorrow any less special, maybe we’ll all appreciate what we have got a little more this year, we may not of course but it could happen. It’s been a year of lousy news & constant suffering & with a further setback to the economy almost certain next year we should all enjoy this Christmas for the break it puts between two tough years, there may be trouble ahead but there is also Turkey with all the trimmings & if that’s not Christmas then I’m damned if I know what is, have a good one folks, I’m going to.

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