To all of you amazing readers, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Obviously a lot of the bloggers and writers here are going to be posting stories about Christmas and the holidays so, of course, I am going to give it a go as well.
Christmas is a time to be with family so hopefully when this is put online I will be back with mine in the UK. At the minute, however, I am stuck in Barcelona airport for 12 hours listening to a mixture of Christmas songs and carols to get in the festive mood. Christmas is an amazing time to visit the UK. For me, nothing feels like being in Scotland or Northern Ireland and going from the freezing cold weather outside into my house with the central heating turned on. I end up smiling every day (which is quite rare for a grumpy guy) and realising how lucky I am.
This year will be the first time my Slovak girlfriend will get to see my family at Christmas. I am a little worried because it always ends up being crazy! Normally we spend Christmas morning opening our presents in our own houses before meeting in the afternoon. We are quite a big family so there are about 30 people in one tiny house. We all bring different foods, sweets and drinks. It becomes one huge party. We have an amazing meal of turkey, stuffing, ham, three different kinds of potato, roasted parsnips and disgusting Brussels sprouts. We also eat an excessive amount of chocolate, mince pies, nuts and drink mulled wine along with anything else we have in the house.
The evening is made up of fun games like Charades and recovering from all of the food. We watch classic Christmas movies from 'The Grinch' to 'Die Hard'. Sometimes, if we are lucky, we bring out the old Christmas CDs and sing until we lose our voices.
Boxing Day, the 26th, is reserved specifically to recover from the night before. Since I live close to my aunt, the host, Boxing Day is spent with all of the leftovers from the feast. This time, though, she cooks it all in a fine batter for us and mixes everything together. It's amazing. It is a night for celebrating, laughing and realising how lucky we are. That will be extremely important without my grandfather this year. I think there will be a lot of tears as well and recollecting fond memories. Stay safe this Christmas! Talk to you all in 2015!
What are your Christmas traditions?
