festive feelings

I am, despite everything, excited about Christmas. Yes, I know we’ll be ridiculously busy at work in the weeks building up to it, and I know I’ll be under constant pressure from Those Above to maximise selling opportunities and pick the pockets of the locals, and I know the imminent of arrival of The Little One means we can’t really plan anything in particular, but at the end of the day (or maybe I should say ‘at the end of the year’) IT’S CHRISTMAS!! And, as I believe I may have concluded sometime previously, Christmas is what YOU make it. It’s also what you WANT it to be, so if you want it to be a quiet, inexpensive family affair with a simple meal and a couple of sherries, then make it thus. Don’t get swept up in the hype of advertising and don’t let anyone or anything else dictate the way you spend it. Especially don’t be influenced by your own internal expectations of what you THINK you SHOULD be doing. To my knowledge, there’s no Yuletide Police patrolling around in sledges arresting people for not putting up any decorations or incarcerating those who neglect to cook sprouts. There’s no statute written in law that forces you to smile at cracker jokes on pain of prosecution. There’s no punishment-in-the-streets for those who fail to eat mince pies, where you are forced to carry a Christmas tree naked through town while neighbours throw roast chestnuts at your danglies.

You can do what you want, how you want it, and everyone else can just lump it.

This is a long-winded way of me telling people that I’m not sending out any Christmas Cards.

RC 6-12-18