Christmas eve.

The tree is up, food (mostly) prep'd - last night Chris told me I smelled of Strawberry jelly.

I'm at that funny in-between place, where I'm waiting, not able to start, but not really able to do other stuff either. Glad the cold is mostly on it's way out now and strength is returning so that I can participate without coughing up a lung. It's still hard to hear speech and translate it into meaning, but that's as much a head as an ear thing.

Next to me on the settee I have a sleeping wife & a snoring cat, the cat making more noise than the wife! Afternoon naps are a basic human right in our household.

And so I have a prezzie or 2 to wrap still, in the peaceful gap. Hope she likes it (in particular) in white gold, rather than silver. We'll find out in less than 24 hours.

Christmas is an odd time.

I don't know really how to make it mean anything. It's not like a birthday celebration because there's all kinds of odd traditional stuff that's all about us wrapped up with it. And it's not like celebrating a birth because Jesus is here with me all the time, so He's not being born fresh again each year.

As a child, it was a time where you went along with parents to visit aged rellies,
usually living in coal heated houses so that the living room was roasting hot, hallway icy cold. My brother & I would crawl around warming up & cooling off, playing round the different floor layouts & unfamiliar furniture. Later there were church events we'd take part in, & family parties each with their own variety of funny games: passing scissors crossed & uncrossed, squeak piggy squeak etc. The childrens parties were more like a competitive sports session, always with games that one could never win, and the kind of food that old people imagined children liked to eat.

Later, it was an opportunity to acquire the things one could not be patient enough to save for, and later still, a time of hoping to 'get off with someone' while they were susceptible/charitable/careless (only worked once, did not work out well). Then came knowing Jesus, and Christmas stopped really meaning anything much.

Once again, as with so many other things we do, I'm reasonably convinced it's all about us, and only a little about Hm at best. I enjoy the celebration - no longer a radical that wants to ban Christmas - but it's still a strange thing for me because it distinctly doesn't do what it says on the wrapper. For years Christmas was valid as an outreach opportunity and a few days break after all the hard work at the mid-point of winter. Now... I dunno.

Maybe we need grandchildren to validate it now? AFAIK not too much chance of that for a bit (I hope!) so we'll have to carry on, just getting older, walking through it and trying to enjoy it for what it might be.