This is the second year we’ve had Christmas in our own house, as opposed to going to parents. What with having to deal with the cats and medicating Ginge, and the heartbreak of losing Sin, and the work and effort the business takes, a five hour trip to the south coast would have just been way too much.
So we did what we did the year before, and rounded up some stray friends to cook for. This year worked out a lot better in terms of planning. I prepared the desserts in advance. There was no mad rush to buy more potatoes before it was too late. Joe and Mike didn’t drop the entire turkey on the floor while they were turning it (and there is still debate over whose fault it actually was, so I’m not going near that one again).
The food was great, we fed people until they literally fell asleep, and then I did washing up until the end of time. We fed more friends on Boxing Day, and played a lot of board games, and generally had a really good time. Christmas Day is the one day of the year it’s quiet on the customer service front (apart from people who don’t celebrate Christmas raising support tickets), and because we planned out all the food and timings properly, we didn’t forget anything and it wasn’t stressful.
I would say it was a mostly traditional Christmas, in that we had all the regular savory food, but with little things that has a non-Christmas twist, like homemade unicorn shortbread (which our lovely friends said they’d been looking forward to ever since they saw the Facebook photos) and a dragon pinata (which we’ll end up doing at New Year because we didn’t have time for it over Christmas).
https://www.instagram.com/p/BrxUEUcB_aD/
The nice thing about spending Christmas with really old, comfortable friends is that you all want to do similar things (such as play a game together), but you still don’t have to do formal things like get dressed or pretend you don’t want to eat chocolate for breakfast. Despite all the planning and mad rush, it feels really nice to be able to provide a huge homecooked meal (actually – several!) for friends and look after them over the Christmas period. We typically have an open house, so people can drop in as and when they feel like it, and we’ve developed our own tradition of pancakes for breakfast on Christmas morning (well…the batter is already made for the Yorkshire puddings, so it’d be rude not to!)
It would have been our first Christmas with Sin, so that was pretty depressing, although the logical part of my brain was like, “He wouldn’t have care either way anyway, it doesn’t have any meaning to him.” We’re still grieving and still getting used to him not being around after having him a solid indoor-only house cat for two months.
In terms of presents, I got a bunch of stuff I really wanted from my Amazon wishlist, like books and games, and as I’d been joking for ages about getting a speedboat, Joe got me a Lego speedboat. Complete with skunk companion for some reason (?!) So now I’m the proud owner of my very own speedboat.
How was your Christmas?
