Christmas at Home

Everyone has their own Christmas rituals although in our house, as this tends to be a mix of British and German traditions, it is probably fairly unique - although the British traditions are really just a muddled up version of the German ones (thanks to Prince Albert) with a good dollop of Americana in the mix (thanks to the telly).

One of the differences is that Santa delivers the presents in person on the evening of the 24th. In the past, this has tended to be a family friend (and Raymond never caught on to the fact that Santa would speak in German or Scots depending on where we were at the time) although in the last couple of years it has tended to be me in a Santa outfit and a suitably bass voice - probably resembling the grim reaper more than Saint Nick. As the Santa outfit was packed away somewhere and, irritatingly, I seem to have more of the physique for it these days, I decided that Santa would be involved in a road traffic accident and phone his apologies through to the kids.

Now this must make me sound like a right Ebenezer Scrooge type character and, in all fairness, you would probably be right. In fact, Scrooge is one of those literary characters I really find myself identifying with although not so much from the miserly miserablism but more from his Christmas redemption. I get the same every year. I really can't be bothered with the whole commercial thing, the excess of food, queuing up in the supermarket for a hellish hour at the checkout because the shops are going to be closed for a whole 24 hours and the sheer crapulence of an over-indulged Christmas evening. But, like Scrooge, once the real spirit of Christmas is upon me I do tend to enjoy it - possibly for no other reason than there is enough decent family entertainment for us all to watch together.

There was a good selection on the TV with the orphaned Christmas Top Of The Pops, a Shrek film and the now traditional Doctor Who special, A Christmas Carol, loosely based on Dickins' novella. Dickens' story and Doctor Who do have quite a bit in common as they both involve time travel and the latest incarnation of the Doctor seems to take great delight in messing about with the forth dimension - this is something that the show has tended to shy away from in the past. Of course, it's always difficult to pitch a Christmas Special as there will inevitably be quite a few people watching the show who are not regular viewers so using one of the best known stories in English literature as a basis is a pretty smart move. I think it worked well. It was always going to be more of a fantasy rather then Sci-Fi story but it functioned within it's confines and did, at least, feel "special". We then had Edward Sissorhands on Channel 4 which seemed remarkably in the same vein.

Of course, Christmas does mean that there will be plenty of food and we definitely went for the German side with this by having Goose, Rotkohl and Knödel. All very nice and an improvement on turkey and Brussels sprouts (tasteless dry meat and fart grenades as Michael McIntyre calls them). To top this off we even managed to have two German women arguing in the kitchen whilst pointing large knives at each other. Oh the joys!

So that was Christmas in the Maxwell household. Only 364 shopping days to go. Humbug!