If you haven’t guessed it already, Christmas is my favourite time of year. Although unfortunately the days of getting up at 6 am on Christmas morning and rushing to see what Santa left under the tree are well and truly behind me there’s just something about this time of year that makes my heart happy. It’s pretty un-explainable why I love it so much I just do, as soon as September hits, my mind bypasses Halloween had hops on the Christmas band wagon.
Since my brother and I are, for lack of a better word, “grown-ups” now Christmas has changed slightly in our house. As I said, no more me waking the entire house up at 6 am to open presents, I’ve actually become quite partial to a Christmas morning lie in would you believe! When I eventually manage to drag myself out of the bed, our family Christmas routine is fairly the same.
Dad would have the stove in the sitting room lit, mam would have the turkey in the oven and all the veg pealed (perks of that Christmas morning lie in, everything dinner wise is almost done by the time I get up) so we all gather in the sitting room to exchange gifts.
It always starts with my brother and I opening our gifts from “Santa” (I still like to convince myself he’s real) then it’s on to giving my parents theirs, which in recent years has become a strong contender for my favourite part of Christmas. In the last few years I’ve actually been earning money so I’m now able to spoil them a little. After we open presents I generally start the day with a breakfast of a few sneaky Jelly Tots we get in our bundle of gifts. I tend to abandon the cooking for about an hour or so and get myself ready for the day.
In the mists of me getting ready and the dinner getting cooked my uncle calls to us. We stick on the kettle and crack open the tin of biscuits.
After some slightly large servings of turkey, ham, potatoes, veg and granny’s famous stuffing, the washing up is quickly done and we’re out the door to go to my ganny’s house with the aim of being home not later than 6 or 7 pm.
Dessert stop #1 takes place in Granny’s house. Granny’s house on Christmas day is probably my favourite place to be. Crowds of aunts, uncles and cousins flood the place, the chatter and the laughter had on Christmas day just gives me that warm fuzzy happy to be alive feeling.
Moving on to dessert stop #2, we go to visit my dad’s brother and his family. There’s a bit of a cross over here with godparents and godchildren so we exchange our gifts, and tuck into dessert number 2 before we eventually realise that it’s about 7:30 and we should be well gone home at this stage.
When we get home the fire gets wound up, the Christmas pj’s get put on, ham, turkey and stuffing sabmos get made, and like the big children we all are.. the years newest Disney movie gets put on.
This is how we’ve spend every Christmas since I was a child, minus the one year when we didn’t have an oven, but that’s a story for a different day. I love the tradition of us all descending on my granny’s house and being surrounded my so much family.
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