New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve

Well, it's the almost here and another holiday season will have passed. I have been convinvced this year that the fuss is not worth it.

By that I mean the charging around to get presents from the shops, the buying up of larger quantities of more expensive food than we need, the writing of hundreds of cards to people who either don't send them or who only write them as a chore. There were always people who didn't get a card (but should have) from me because they were lost in the melee of getting out all the cards that I did as a chore and that robbed my concentration.

In future I shall write cards in order and stop when it feels like a chore, (as in a job that you know you should be doing if only out of a sense of guilt). I am an adult now and should learn to steer my own course, take responsibility for my own decisions but to do that I need to make some decisions.

Christmas itself doesn't really enthuse me. We don't have children so no incentive there. I used to have visions of the classic but non existant Victorian Christmas, log fires, snow in the streets, chestnut sellers on the corner, everyone smiling and greeting each other, their breath forming clouds and carolers singing in front of the church. OK, that is a little over the top but you get the idea. [I factored out things like street beggars, opium dens, poverty in a large portion of the neighbourhood, vermin, disease and other things too numerous or horrible to mention].

I imagined myself, and actually did in a way, writing letters in fountain pen to friends far away, sealing envelopes and cards with wax and popping them into the post box on my way to collect the daily poapers.

In actual fact Christmas is very much like the rest of the year. One or two days when I give some goodies, get some goodies and catch up with a few friends. We are lucky, when we visit our father-in-law he cooks the most magnificent roast dinners (though, as we have it around noon, I call it lunch); Christmas meals don't top that. I can go without Christmas tree decorating, I like to glance at the end result but it soon palls.

By this point I may have thoroughly depressed you, gentle reader, but it's the cusp of a New Year and I am determined to be honest and share more in this blog.

We had a comment in a Christmas card this year that made me think. There are people we hardly ever see who would really enjoy our company, I am of mind that we could see them at this time another year but it would mean disappointing others and I have gone through my life desparately trying not to disappoint anyone, (usually leading to disappointing me, but that's another story). May be that's the spirit of the season I should cling to, doing things for people who do so much for us in the preceeding year.

For now we are going to enjoy our time with friends in the UK we see too little of. Yesterday it was a laugh and a mooch around Windsor, who knows what today will bring.