Tuesday, December 01, 2009

I'm really rather fond of this time of year

Here we are at the beginning of December, my house is strewn with Christmas decorations, the kids have decorated the tree, we have strings of lights ready to festoon the garden, I have all my special Christmas candles out, the Advent calendar is hanging by the dining table, there's Christmas music loaded up on the iPod and I've started my annual re-read of Connie Willis' Miracle and Other Christmas Stories. Yes, I'm an atheist celebrating a pagan mid-winter festival co-opted by the Christian church to commemorate the birth of a man who was was almost certainly not born on the 25th of December and I'm doing so in the middle of summer.

Of course I'm also rather stressed by all the STUFF that has to be done in the next few weeks and when people ask me how I am I tend to reply "A little weary..." and I whinge about being asked to do extra things like make 40-odd jelly cups and cook brownies for a year 6 mufti day on the same night as I'm hosting a P&C executive meeting at my place and having my mother-in-law over for dinner. But I do it any way. Because it matters to the kids. But I made Adam cook the brownies. (That was last night by the way.)

Is there a point to all of this? Well may you ask...there did seem to be one when I started....
(It would help if I wasn't half-way through my second glass of Stanton and Killeen muscat.)

Oh, I know! Christmas, it makes me happy, for lots of reasons that are to do with family and friends and celebrating life and sharing and thinking of others and reconnecting with people we don't see often and good food and drink and silly traditions and memories and endings and beginnings. So what I thought I might try and do through December is write a little about some of those things and try to explain why I, I really like Christmas.

Meanwhile, I'm going to finish this glass of wine and eat another chocolate elf.

8 comments:

Ariane said...

Let's face it, nothing says "Christmas" like drinking booze and eating elves.

I am also rather fond of Christmas. :)

Penny said...

I like Christmas too. For me it's all about the family, food, silly traditions, gifts, summer celebrartions etc etc not about the birth of Christ.... which I believe should be celebrated everyday if you happen to be a believer. Not just one day of the year when it was not likely to have happened then. ;-) How convoluted is that! LOL!

Mel said...

Confession - I like Christmas too - even though I end up doing heaps of stuff - I secretly like it that I can get organised enough to make 700 pieces of biscotti for DH to take to work and people think (wow she is a domestic goddess - and I am just for a couple of weeks!)

Lisa66 said...

Yep, me too! This year I am celebrating ENJOYING Christmas again. For the past four years I haven't looked forward to it at all (for various reasons). This year I'm immersing myself in the festivities of the season and enjoying every minute. :)

(Mel - you ARE a domestic goddess!!!)

yodaobi said...

I love it too.
I'm excited that Liam is old enough to start really getting excited about christmas
I've only just started shopping. This year is going to be a little tighter with me just spending $870 on my teeth

yodaobi said...

That's a whole load of excitement in one sentence

Claudya Martinez said...

Wine and chocolate elves are good reasons to like Christmas.

Unknown said...

I like this time of year too! Love the craziness, love all the decorations...not loving having to make cupcakes for a whole class next week though. But I'm going to cheat with Betty Crocker woot woot!