I haven’t written anything about football recently for Le Blow’s Smack My Pitch Up section due to being so horribly, hideously busy with life all last week and over the weekend, that I barely remember my own name.
So, in a terribly lazy fashion, I’ve pinched something that I wrote on my blog some time ago (two years actually – but it’s still relelvant!) regarding the ‘holidays’ as our friends across the pond, and that damn Coke advert would have us say.
Yes. Like we could get away from it, and as TV and shops keep reminding us, Christmas is almost here.
It’s time to bankrupt ourselves in order to bring joy and disatisfaction to our family and friends, with hastily picked out gifts that are all wrong for them. It’s a truly magical time.
But anyway, let’s see what the me of 2010 thought about it all. This is like time travel!
I was feeling a bit Christmassy last week (or it may have been yesterday, all my days roll into one lately) and started thinking about it. I really REALLY <– (capitals mean LOADS) love it. I regress into childhood at the most wonderful time of the year, and there are 5 things I absolutely must do in order to make it perfect.
1. Watch Jingle All The Way, Oliver! and an episode of Wallace & Gromit at some point.
2. Regret the fact I’m a failure as a woman because I haven’t made my own mince pies/cake yet again, unlike Nigella, who probably reared her own turkey too.
3. Read the first chapter of ‘A Christmas Carol’ in my pyjamas with just the tree lights on, having a mince pie. Because that’s the most festive thing I can imagine.
4. Eat things I’d never eat normally. Pringles dipped in seafood sauce for instance, or vile concoction breakfasts featuring leftover roast potatoes and globs of stuffing. Covered in seafood sauce.
5. Re-live embarrassments from Christmas’s past with the family.
The 3 absolute best things about Christmas are…
1. Presents
Obviously. For what would the day be without gifts from your family or significant other, to show they still know absolutely nothing about you?
EXHIBIT A: Christmas 1984. I was a major Prince fan by this time. Had all his albums. Was only interested in his music, and all things to do with him.
Got a black and white clock with Boy George written on the face of it. Not a picture, just ‘Boy George’ in swirly writing. Nope. I have no explanation either. I never asked, just didn’t want to know the thinking behind it.
EXHIBIT B: Christmas 1989. My mother bought me a mirror with Milli Vanilli etched onto the front. One had a hat on, one had a bandana on. They were seated.
As I sat gazing at it in disbelief she said ‘Look, I know you like The Pink Ramones or whoever they are, but that was the only one he had left, and I wanted to get you a mirror.” I may be wrong, but aren’t there billions of mirrors out there that don’t feature Milli Vanilli? The seven years bad luck I incurred by ‘dropping’ it on Boxing Day were worth it.
However, I think in breaking it, I released their evil back into the world. *thinly veiled Superman 2 reference* I was always sorry The Pink Ramones never lived up to their hype. :-/
2. The dinner
The big event. The only time of year we all eat roast turkey and try to pretend it’s not the driest cocking meat on planet earth no matter which chef’s advice you follow. I find drowning it in cranberry sauce does the trick. *top tip*
I’ve always wanted to try a different meat, but my family are staunch traditionalists. If I tried offering them anything other than turkey, they’d be off before the pudding was out of the microwave. Yes! Horror of horrors! I microwave the Christmas pudding! Don’t have time to steam it like some kind of Dickens bellend, and people who do are either pretending to be something they’re not, or Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall.
It’s modern times you Victorian monkeys! Embrace technology!
3. Reminiscences
That bit were you all sit down after the dishes are done, zoning in and out of the Doctor Who Christmas special, talking about things from Christmas’s past. By things, I mean excruciating memories. I won’t go into them, you’ve already heard enough of my hellish tales.
Suffice to say, by the time the Eastenders Special comes on, we’re all glad as it’s something cheerful to watch.
I love it all though. The constancy of it. Everything else may change around me, but I can guarantee that every year we’ll all be sitting down at 3pm on December 25th and talking about the same old things. Laughing at the same old things. Missing the same people.
I don’t honestly care about the presents, the dinner, or any of that. Although they’re nice things. It’s the faces across the table laughing at the same old jokes, me getting shouted at every year for taking the presents out of the crackers without pulling them, followed by the obligatory jokes “..she doesn’t like banging”.
I got a metal bottle opener out of one last Christmas! METAL!! I KNOW!
It’s the best time of the year, right up there with Halloween for me… but I like that for different reasons…*sinister music plays*
We’re in November now, but I’d already seen a Christmas advert about a month ago for one of those hamper companies. The advert barrage in the 2 months leading up to that one day is insane, as much as I love Christmas I don’t love the desperate consumerist nature of it.
Not what it’s about at all for me. Jesus should be ashamed of himself.Sorry about this, but it is drawing ever closer daily.
So whatever you’re doing and whoever you’re doing it with, I hope it’s wonderful. If you happen to be on your own, you can always come to my house*.
*re-read this post and pretend I’m there.
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