Christmas
It is late afternoon on Boxing Day, and the children are still playing a marathon board game called “The Battle for Hogwarts” in the lounge with my other half. It’s been going on all day – I played for the first couple of hours – they seem to be in for the long haul. I was worried about buying it as a “family game” because it was quite expensive, but seriously – if they get this many hours fun out of it on a regular basis, it will be money well spent.
I’m not entirely sure why, but I’ve been ridiculously tired for the last couple of days. I’m not sure if it’s the alcohol intake, the endless supply of rich food, or just falling apart after the seemingly endless struggle with obligation and expectation in the run-up to Christmas.
Christmas has been good though. Once we arrived at Christmas Eve afternoon, everything had been done, and everybody relaxed into it. The children were in bed by perhaps 11pm, and didn’t get up until after 7am. We opened presents, had breakfast, the in-laws arrived, we opened more presents, had a drink, and so on. Christmas kind of runs on rails once you let it.
We went out for lunch on Christmas Day – something we have done for the last few years. Yes, it’s quite expensive, but it also makes the day a lot easier. Investing money in the day rather than presents was kind of a theme this year – we’ve all done Christmases in the past where you get to the end, and need another holiday.
I think perhaps we spent less in material terms this year than we have for the last decade. We still had a lot of things for the children to open, but nothing outrageously expensive. No phones, laptops, or video games this year. We did manage to find some of the singing games for the Nintendo Wii, which caused all sorts of hilarity late last night. I wonder what the neighbors thought of the late evening rendition of YMCA coming from the upstairs bedroom of our house ?
We realised on Christmas Eve that we have had the children for 10 years this year – this was their tenth Christmas with us. In a way it was nice that wedidn’t do anything special to mark the occasion – just spending time together for a few days has been enough.
I’m still thinking about what to do with the whole social internet thing. I posted a photo to Instagram earlier, and thought “do I really need to be doing this?”. It all seems so pointless – like we’re generating noise much of the time. Maybe it would do me good to step away for a few months and just post to the blog – nothing else.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and watch the Doctor Who Christmas Special, along with all the other things I’ve completely missed so far.