Battening down the hatches

By long tradition, we celebrate Christmas by shutting up shop and turning into anti-social blobs for three days.

Once the meat is collected, that's it.  We'll go into "this is our holiday, we can do what we like even if nobody else in the world approves."  Essentially, it means we'll wander around the house, cook a lot of stuff, eat it vaguely whenever we like, keep the coffee pot and mulled cider running and turn ourselves loose on our various hobbies without any guilt.  It is quite wonderful.

For a family of Catholic Jews to achieve guilt free blobbing is a major accomplishment.  It is a tradition I hold very dear. 

Organisation - I have the skillz

Sometimes I have the skillz.

The list so far - and meagre though it is, it pleases me:

Festive meat ordered:  Traditionally we tend to hole up over Christmas and just blob about amiably for the duration, but on this occasion we're going to be in Cyprus over the New Year.  Therefore it seemed a little foolish to buy vast slabs of meat.  My mum would have been so proud of me for thinking ahead.  One turkey crown, one piece of outstandingly beautiful beef, one ham to be cooked at home.  No pre-order on chipolatas.  The very fine butcher assured me that they will have plenty and they can be purchased on pick up.  Down payment made.

Bake fest impending:  Today and tomorrow.  Dear friend (she is my usual partner in crime for cake construction) is descending later today and we have plans to make a gingerbread building of some kind.  Possibly several as between us we never knowingly undercater.  A wistful phone conversation earlier in the week suggested that we may try to build something capable of accommodating a tealight without the gingerbread catching fire.  We shall make the building blocks (so to speak) today and then get busy with the icing gun tomorrow.

I also intend to make a Christmas cake based closely on the uber-chocolate cake I made for the infamous wedding back in October.  Fruit cake is pointless in our family as nobody eats it.  Booze-infused chocolate cake is likely to go down well, however.

Additionally, there is the son's birthday cake.  By tradition, he chooses what he wants the thing to look like, and so far has had a bird-eating spider, Cthulhu devouring a boat and a flame spitting dragon.  This year he wants another Elder God and I shall attempt to craft Shub-Niggurath for him. 

Trees:   Will go up this weekend as well.  One in each front facing bay window just because.

Yet to be done:

Umm.  Some present buying would be good, I suppose.
My tax return.  I'm whispering this one as it's a black spot in any year for the self-employed.

A modest proposal for Mikelmerck and festive planning

From the 1st to the 24th of December, I am intending to post daily about Mikelmerck.  After my spectacular NaNo failure, I'm feeling guilty.

Also (and this counts as more important than my lifelong guilt trip) a timeline is emerging.  With timelines comes history and all the fragmentary bits are starting to fall into place.  Even more to the point, some extremely talented and helpful people have shown some interest in helping me out with this.  It would be nice if I gave them something to help out with.

On the festive planning front, I need to shop for the advent calenders.  We all have them.  They are simple cloth ones with pockets.  Into these pockets, things may go.  Mostly, it must be admitted, this consists of chocolate, but every year I hope I'll get inspired and do something different.  Hasn't happened yet mind you, but you never know.  I could write out helpful suggestions and see how well it goes down.

"On the first day of advent, I will take my socks down to the washing machine."
"On the second day of advent, I will check how much toilet paper there is in the house," and so on, culminating with
"On Christmas Eve I will not attempt to murder the person who wrote these helpful notes."

Back in the days when Woolworths existed, it was easy, if tiresome.  I simply spent an hour or so furtling through the pick n mix.  Not any more.  Now it's down to a big tin of Roses or similar and some frantic jiggling as I realise too late that there are adjacent green caramels in one of them.  I have nobody to blame but myself.  I introduced the things.  Hrmph.

Incomng festivities

Long practice has made me very good at ignoring tinsel until well into December, but that isn't to suggest I dislike Christmas.  On the contrary, I adore it.

That's rather the point.  I do adore it, and I like adoring it and I'd be upset if my enjoyment was lessened by over-indulgence.  So I ration myself.  There are good historical reasons as well.  Mr Rev and I were foolish enough to indulge in childbirth on 23 December.  Son has never forgiven us.  I went through a draconian few years forbidding the putting up of the tree until the other important birthday was over, but the family were more rational than me.  Son pointed out that he'd rather have the tree up to enjoy for a little longer.  I have caved in therefore, and our tree goes up sometime around the weekend before.  That seems about right.

There are other events that mark the coming festival of course.  I'm terrifically bad at religion at nearly all times of the year, but some things go bone deep and one of them is an advent crown.  It's one of my annual challenges to find purple and pink candles to create this, along with finding a numbered advent candle with some chance of burning down its numbers in under 8 hours.  I usually fail and compromise, but I enjoy making the effort.  And as OCD behaviour goes, it's harmless.

There is also St Nicholas's Eve.  December 6 marks his visits and he leaves gifts in the shoes of pleasing children.  This one is a hangover from my childhood when my mother employed a particularly Catholic au pair from Austria.  Doris introduced my sister and I to this custom and I made the fatal error of passing it on to my own son.  Naturally he is unlikely to refuse the offer of free gifts, even if he also gets symbolic coal in the toe of his wellington on the way.

Before any of this however, is the real start.  I walked down the theatre on Saturday morning (I teach 8 hours of non-stop classes that day) and saw it!  The Christmas Parrot was leaning against a tree and waiting to be hoisted.

Some small explanation is needed for why our municipal decorations include a giant sized red parrot among the snowmen and santas.  The story goes that he was purchased as part of a job lot of leftover Blackpool lights.  Rather than hide him away, the Rotary Club decided to make a feature of him.  Hence our annual light-turning on ceremony complete with mince pies and carols is adorned with the Parrot.  He's pretty ancient now and a lot of his paint has chipped off, but he's the real symbol of Christmas starting for me.