Twas the evening after Christmas...

[annwfyn]

...and a Sally was curled up, all happy and content on the sofa.

I've had a lovely Christmas. It's been everything I wanted it to be, and I've been pretty much completely happy for the last 30 hours now. That's a rare enough sensation for me that I want to clutch hold of it and hang on to it whilst I've got it.

I do love Christmas.

I love it because I'm English, and in my brain it's a very English holiday. I never really thought of myself as having much culture as an English girl until I lived abroad for a while and realised how much a part of me my Englishness is. I am a part of a continuity of people who have lived on this island for thousands of years and I like that. I like knowing that I'm part of the same rhythms, the same cycle of festivals throughout the year, walking through the same old rituals that they followed. For over a thousand years, people have stopped work on the same date, to gather with friends and family for a feast.* I like the carols, especially the very old ones like the wassail song, in much the same way that I love old folk music. It's being part of something greater, and that matters to me.

I love it because I am, these days, a little bit of a Christian on the quiet, and ultimately that does make it a kind of big deal. I love going to Midnight Mass, and hearing the choir singing in the candlelight, and I do think there is something very moving about the idea of a festival dedicated to hope, to birth, to renewal, no matter which faith it is expressed through.

I love it because I don't celebrate birthdays much, especially my own** and so it's the only time of year that I do set aside to exchange gifts with friends and family. I like getting presents (who doesn't?) and I really like giving them. I like finding the right thing for someone (this year I was very proud of the St Christopher necklace I found for pierot and the replica Viking torc I found for molez), and I am incredibly touched by people finding the right thing for me. As a note - Jeremiah is amazingly good at finding me the right Christmas present, and I love him for it with all my heart.

I love it because I love the visuals of Christmas. I love decorating my Christmas tree, and adore the rich reds and greens of it. I love the little electric candles I see in people's windows, and I think the artwork on Christmas cards is fantastic. I just love winter scenes, and I think little fairy lights are the cutest things in the world.

I really enjoy the food - it tastes good, and makes me happy.

I really like the myth and the stories that surround Christmas. They are all wonderful and optimistic stories, and I think it's nice to have a day set aside at this time of year (when it's dark and cold) to wallow in warm and fuzzy thoughts, ideas and stories.

I really like the way Christmas is set aside from the rest of the year. I love the quiet of the London streets - I even like the way most of the shops are shut. I like the stillness - the pause from the hectic rush of life - and the acceptance that you won't be available. The whole world stops for a moment, and considering how rushed and how pressured modern life is, I think I'm glad that there is this small patch in the year where that can still happen. I constantly dread the day that our society decides that no holiday should be special in this way, and every day starts to blend into every other day, as a constant high speed grind.

I think Christmas may actually be my favourite day in the year. It makes me happy, every single year, and today I'm happy again.

And that is what Christmas means to me.



*And before that they gathered with their monarch to sacrifice captives placate the gods to celebrate Yule, which is also kinda heart warming, but I've been advised that modern day society frowns on connecting with out ancestors in that way. I'm allowed to have little cocktail sausages wrapped up in bacon with my Christmas dinner, and if I wish I can burn a small log, but that's about as much of Yule as is acceptable in the 21st century, it seems.

** There are angsty reasons for this, mostly to do with my birthday being Mum's birthday as well, and so always being a rather sad time of year for me, and not one where I can really celebrate wholeheartedly.

Comments

[melsner.livejournal.com]

Father got me a battery powered hand held soldering iron. For welding little bits of wires together. He's adamant that I'll use it all the time. For all my soldering. of wires.

[adze.livejournal.com]

I think I prefer giving presents to getting them, as well. It's something about the effort involved in trying to find what you think is the right thing for someone, then seeing if you were right, and hopefully seeing that they like it.

That's not to say that I don't like getting stuff, of course, I just like seeing people opening the stuff I've got them a little bit more.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Me too, actually.

Odd how that's changed. Even when I was twenty I was still selfishly all about getting stuff.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Happy Christmas.

My family's attitude to gift giving is very odd...

[bringeroflight.livejournal.com]

In short, my parents buy what they want and my brother and I pay them for it. Ben and I went out shopping on the morning of Christmas eve, found what we wanted and gave it to each other to buy...