‘Twas the Night Before Christmas…

I suppose that it’s a combination of being (relatively) poor in my youth and not really being a member of any kind of extended family. Which means that I have almost zero experience of the kind of family Christmas you see on TV or in the movies. So, no giant turkey being cut by the Patriarch, no Elders complaining about the food, falling asleep or constantly farting (and blaming the dog) and no children running around, fighting and throwing food. It was only my Mum and Dad, Me, my Brother and, until she moved away to start her own family, my Sister. We never even had a family dinner around the table – not having a table or room for one – but sat with our Christmas meal (always very nice – Thanks Mum!) on our laps while watching TV (not the traditional Queen’s Speech). Naturally we had a tree and decorations. Those decorations lasted years, indeed decades. I remember the last time I saw them a few years ago and they still included items I had made in school almost 50 years before. The angel on top of the tree was older than I was, so we had smaller family traditions that hardly varied across the decades. Indeed one of the last innovations was that the chicken leftovers (rather than turkey which we never had) ended up in a curry rather than cold meat over the next few days.

After I moved away in my 20’s (University) I always came back home for Christmas. It became more of a bind later when I had to travel up from London with, it seemed, a million other people doing the same thing and the travel back (usually on 27th December) was a complete pain because the railways always chose this time for repairs. Then, a couple of years ago, there was an uncharacteristic blizzard on the day I was travelling North. What was normally a 3 hour journey (1 change) took over that to get half way – before I was advised from home to turn around – and another 5 hours to get back here. After that I decided that Christmas from then on would be moved into October and I’ve been doing that ever since. The family (and work) think it’s funny but there’s a lot of advantages to it. Mum even cooks Christmas dinner (veggie version for me these days) which I think is very good of her – and very good generally.

So now I have ‘proper’ Christmas here. Friends (and again people from work) think it’s odd that I spend Christmas alone. I’ve even been invited to other people’s family get-together’s (usually by friend’s Mother’s) as they think that Christmas MUST be a family occasion. Where actually I like the idea of being here on my own – beholden to no one, doing what I like and eating pizza (although not this year – long story). Traditionally these days Christmas Day (and New Year’s Day) are gaming days. I get up late, potter about a bit, and then game for 12 hours – with breaks of course. It’s a treat I don’t often get the time to do – plus most of my friends are off-line with their families so….. My plan for most of tomorrow is to build a base in my game No Mans Sky (Next) which is something I’ve never done before – the basics went in today but there’s lots I haven’t even touched yet. I’m looking forward to be able to invest that amount of time/effort towards it. I’ve even got a bit of an extra treat set aside for New Year’s Eve (also spent on my own) – I’m going to watch all 5 Jurassic Park films back to back. Yup, I’m THAT sad!

A VERY Merry Christmas to all my readers. You know who you are (obviously!).