Yes, Christmas is over. Yes, I missed the boat. But I did so much Christmas this year and I've been so busy doing Christmas that I didn't write anything about it so I'm going to write about it NOW. If this is not acceptable, please do feel free to save this up for Christmas 2013.
There is something about being away for Christmas that leaves you with two choices. You can either be a Scrooge, reject the whole notion of a proper Christmas and pretend the whole thing isn't happening. Or you can do what I did and embrace the season with a strange enthusiasm that scares those nearest to you. This included reading A Christmas Carol, hence my reference to Scrooge. I wonder how many of my generation saw The Muppet's Christmas Carol a thousand times as children (and it was fantastic every time) and as a result, they now picture the characters of A Christmas Carol as muppets (and Michael Caine) - because reading the book, I realised that in my head it was all muppets.
I am feeling awfully lazy so I'm just going to list a few things I did for Christmas this year.
Two Christmas parties with work: How did our team manage this? Somehow, we have managed to winkle our way into another team's Christmas festivities as well as our own. Total win, because the one that I don't really think we belong at was in Newnham College, which puts on a fantastic Christmas spread in a very picturesque dining hall. The other is just a run of the mill pub drinks do but it involved a Secret Santa. I got to try mulled cider and there was much Christmas cheer.
Choir - Christmas concert. Actually two Christmas concerts. We sang carols at a street fair AND we had a proper end of year concert in a church with an audience and I knew lots of the words to the songs as well which was a win. This also involved mince pies.
Church - I managed to go to a candle-lit carol service, another non-candle-lit service that had a proper little orchestra, and a Christmas morning service. All of these involved mulled fruit juice (Christians) and mince pies.
Christmas dinners - the first one with my housemates, who cooked up a delicious feast. The second one, Gab and I cooked ourselves and it was not in the least a disaster. I can now put 'Christmas roast dinner' on my resume. (This is in reference to the fact that one ought to be able to list one's professionally useless but hard-won accomplishments on one's resume. For instance, I always know how much water to put in a kettle; I can list the monarchs of England in order from Richard III downwards; and, now, I can cook a decent although not astonishing Christmas roast.) The second Christmas dinner was referred to as the ex-pat dinner. Originally it was going to be just Gab and me rattling around Cambridge on Christmas Day, not entirely sure what to do with ourselves; but in the end, I found us two other Adelaide girls with nowhere to go and we threw in a Dutch girl for good measure. I suppose you could make a comment about misery liking company but I've never been totally sure what that phrase means. And, actually, we weren't miserable at all. That evening, to deal with the Christmas Day fullness, Gab and I went for a long night walk around the completely empty streets of Cambridge. On Christmas night, Cambridge is a ghost town. No students, no tourists, no one at all! The river was marginally overflowing its banks (although subsequent experiences in York show that it was not properly flooded), the Christmas lights were lit and we only got a bit drizzled on. It was a lovely evening.
Throughout, we also drank mulled wine and cider and sang Christmas carols and altogether had the most Christmas I've ever had in one holiday season.
And above all, while I know that the original festival is about pagan midwinter, I do love being reminded that Jesus came into the world as a human child, and that he came because I needed a Saviour. And that's always a joyful thing to remember.
I hope every one of you had a wonderful Christmas full of joy and laughter. I'm sorry that I didn't get to talk to you and I hope we'll have lots of time to compare Christmas tales soon. And - several hours late for some of you, and still quite early for me - Happy New Year!
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