Current music:

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht...

Very Merry

Merry Christmas, Everybody!
May today prove to be a day of happiness, and remember, treasure not what you are given, but who is doing the giving.

I overslept again, and spent the afternoon wrapping presents, cooking odd bits of 'Christmas Dinner' with my usual seasonings, and doing some tidying-up. Opa later came around, and we had a nice meal with some lovely turkey (most people had pork), potatoes, cranberries, peas, wine...although I once again proved I am a regular failure with crackers. After the meal, we sat around for a while, gave out a few small presents and ate ice-cream. When Opa left later, however, we had our proper present time, given how we'll be spending tommorrow in Berkshire. Oh well, the Germans open presents on Christmas Eve anyhow...

What did I get? Well, the main thing was my digital camera, but I got that back in September, and in any case, it's disappeared, and I don't know where it could have got to, which is a tad worrying, and also means no Christmas photos. Anyhow, I also got a T-shirt and trousers, a DAB radio, a CD-burning kit, and various foodstuffs ranging from lime poppadoms to malt beer. Nothing huge, but I don't want anything huge: I don't need anything huge. I'd explain that now, but it'll wait until Boxing Day or the day after. Time slips by oh so quickly. I enjoyed seeing the others open my presents, however. Goodness knows why I got my brother the RHCP's album, given how he generally treats me, but he was glad, so it's fine.

So it's Christmas Day. Once upon a time, I'd have been in bed long ago, because that's what Christmas is all about. The magic of Christmas Night, sleep to bring it closer. These past few years, I've been finding myself the only one up early on Christmas morning, perhaps the quietest time of the whole year. I glance at the date on the taskbar, and a shiver runs through me...'25 December'. It's like suddenly finding yourself in the fields of Eden. It's magic, in a way, although two thoughts run through that. One is how I ought not to be awake at this...sacred time. The other is that it's slipping by, and before I know it, Christmas 2006 is another one to add to the list. Life is like that, blast it! Christmas comes but once a year, and the expectation shadows the event always. It has to.

As far as I'm concerned, instead of a Christmas this year, I've had three. One being in these past few hours, Weihnachtsabend. One is soon to come, down South. The other was a week ago, when I awoke after finally escaping the minefield of essays. Holly came home to Hazel, and we spent a few hours cooking a proper, traditional, Christmas Dinner. I never have them at home. My family ends up with rice, red cabbage and other such things. That night, after much kitchen fun, we settled down with a CD of Christmas music playing (everything from Wizzard to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra), my bedside lamp forming a sort of candlelight, and plates of perhaps the best meal I had all year. We had broccoli, roast potatoes, gravey and even those odd sausages wrapped in bacon. This all with Glühwein to drink, and mince pies and Yule log as dessert. It required a trip down to Tescos and back, but it worth it. I even danced in the aisles to Christmas music, and sang carols walking back up the hill. Christmas then meant freedom from uni-pressure, and time to celebrate a Christmas away from my family with my friends. Other people's Facebook photos had made me jealous.

The journey home the following day was an anticlimax, but it still had its moments. I had to leave the house in a rush, negating the cereal I had bought the night before, and made it to the station just in time for my train, which was impressive considering that I'd only left the house 25 minutes beforehand, into the beginning of the national fog, and carrying a cup of some Chinese tea in one hand. The train journey was packed, but I ended up with a double seat to myself eventually, and the journey across London was ordinary. I didn't have to look at maps or clocks to know where and when. The only oddity was that my Piccadily line carriage was totally empty. I had free time at St. Pancras, so I bought myself a lunch of mixed seeds and cappuccino. The train journey back to Nottingham seemed altogether too short. I must be getting used to this.

Anyhow, back to Christmas! Tonight we watched Midnight Mass on TV. BBC were showing a service from Liverpool that resembled a tightly-staged show, so we switched to a much more personal service on ITV which was wonderful to watch. Regardless of my relgious stance, I love Midnight Mass. I am always disappointed how our church never had it...we would go on Christmas Morning instead, and often it was so important, we could not open presents until after the guests left in the evening. It feels wrong to me to be in Church around 10am on that day. Midnight Mass always seems to have much more atmosphere...then again, I'm all about the light within the darkness, so appropriate so close to the Solstice. Singing carols as part of a vast group to stoney heavens in the vault of tradition at the pinnacle of the foremost holiday...that would be great. In a way, I already got to do that bit, as the Carol Service put on by the two SU choirs a fortnight ago featured a lot of carolling en masse, with the sopranos singing those harmonies that ring of Christmas joy. Oh, I'd love to sing those, but hearing them is enough to send a shiver down the spine.

In retrospect, I suppose I long for a more traditional Christmas than the chaotic mix my family partakes in every year. I perhaps long for the idyll that can never be true. No Christmas can be perfect, even if some of you sometimes give the impression of it. What is Christmas really about? It's not mince pies and turkey. It's not Slade or Santa. It's not tinsel or wrapping paper. It could be about Jesus, Bethlehem and Christinaity, O come all ye faithful, but that's not so much the case for humanity these days. Christmas is about...us. That's why I wrote that line about presents at the start of this entry. Have a fantastic Christmas everyone, and I hope I may too.

A Merry Christmas Night...
Elaine