hi! what are some of your favorite christmas things?
ooooo christmas, i love christmas so apologies if this becomes a long mess -
- call me cliché but i love presents, giving other people something they really want and playing a little part in their day of happiness? amazing
also (insight into my crazy family here lmao, apologies) but we (and i don't know why or how this started but it's just a thing) all write our names and a colour on a piece of paper and randomly pick one each, and then fill a stocking up with 15-20 random little cheap bits we find in shops in that colour and wrap them in ridiculous ways and we can honestly end up with anything from really shitty cheap little plastic cocktail sticks to 11 individually wrapped pens (which yes i did to my dad. twice.) and everything in between and it is genuinely a very good laugh
- i'm going to start this off by reinstating that my family is crazy. like really. so, again unsure why or how this started, but on christmas eve we all get together and make mince pies. roughly 90. and no i'm not kidding. there's usually 11 of us on christmas day, two can't even eat mince pies and yet we still spend an entire evening drinking and singing along to christmas songs and making so many mince pies we run out of room to cool them. we do end up giving a lot of them out to family friends and in hampers for others but we do go through a lot ourselves. who doesn't love a homemade mince pie right?😂
- going to the christmas tree farm and walking in and amongst a forest of trees and pine cones and feeling so incredibly at peace. and then finding the perfect tree and chopping it down and bringing it home is just, i love it
- decorations. i LOVE decorating for christmas. putting the tree up and decorating that is so fun, bringing out all (and when i say all, i mean all) the little characters we have sitting around in and outside the house (which, yes, i have named them all) and lights!!! god i love christmas lights, everyone's houses just look SO pretty. we're really the only house in my little street that do more than one set of lights (and we really do do more than one, turning them all on/off is a task™) and tbh we're like a bright little beacon of light on the corner and i think it's joyful
- bringing out and decorating the castles my grandad made quite a few years ago. he was a crafty man (like my whole family tbh) and made each household a christmas castle out of old toilet rolls and cereal boxes/tablet boxes and matchsticks and sprayed them gold. he made my sister and i one each about a year or 2 before he died, with our names in old english stuck on the front, and they are the one decoration we all cherish deeply in our hearts and light up with pride.
- giving my dog presents. yeah. and yeah i do buy him more than i buy anyone else. i love him and he's my world and i know he doesn't know that they're for a special occasion but i still spoil him nonetheless.
- my family all descend on my nan's house on christmas morning and we don't leave until the new year has rung in, even though we only live 5 minutes from each other and i love it??? it's the one time of the year my family just forget all their toxic opinions and we just get on and have a good time.
- my nan started a tradition in my town many many years ago where the high street shuts down and all the shops stay open late and there's the local brass band playing carols, staff from banks and pubs and restaurants all stand outside their respective buildings serving mulled wine and homemade mince pies. Charity's and local guide/scout groups sell homemade crafts and bakes for charity/to fund an excursion. Local crafts people sell things they've made on little stalls, santa sits on his sleigh with his reindeer, choirs (one which i'm part of) sing christmas songs in the street, halls and community spaces open up for more stalls and it is a wonderfully joyful start to christmas. It was started as an ode to the victorian times and people would often dress up in dickensian outfits, not as many people do these days but the whole town comes out for the lighting of the lights and our town's beginning of christmas.
- performing in christmas concerts. The choir that i'm part of usually does a christmas concert each year (supposed to do one in an old cathedral a few towns over this year but ya know, 2020 happened) and they're always a load of fun too, because we do not take ourselves too seriously.
- attending the local brass band's christmas carol sing along. My grandad wrote a few pieces of music for them and my nan is vice president for them and very much a friend and my family has been going for as long as i can remember. They play carols, we dress up incredibly festively and sing along. There's mince pies and a raffle and a lot of very silly fun.
- boxing day because we all just wake up at some point nearing afternoon (after going to sleep at around 3/4am the night before probably) and eat left over food from the day before, meaning we have mince pies for breakfast and turkey sandwiches for lunch and endless christmas pudding for dinner and we spend the entire day playing board games and just genuinely having a laugh.
- talking of christmas pudding, we make them too. We all get together at my nans in around october every couple of years and make enough christmas pudding mix for roughly 8 puddings, using the same recipe my nan's nan used when she was young. We don't eat all 8 in one day though lmao, we tend to get through 2 between those of us that can eat it on christmas day and boxing day. We then have another on new years eve and another at easter (i yet again do not know why but i am also not complaining). The other 4 get doused in brandy every few months and come out the following christmas and tbh by the time we eat them, we don't need to pour brandy over them to light them on fire, they are flammable enough themselves😂 and thankfully we made enough last year that we didn't have to this year because, ya know, 2020.
- christmas morning. I know it sounds cliché and all but no matter how old i am and how far i've strayed from childhood, i wake up with giddy excitement for the few days of genuine joy i know i'm going to experience. I wear a ridiculously christmassy outift that is just pattern after pattern after pattern and a santa hat and ridiculous earings and wake up to the smell of the turkey cooking in the oven that my mum got up at stupid hours of the morning to prepare. And then we all go up to my nans and shout merry christmas at each other and all easily fall into roles of putting presents under the tree and finding enough mismatched chairs for everyone to sit at, trapesing through the garage to get the extra table, covering them all in many christmassy table cloths, setting the table, preparing the food, folding the christmas napkins into christmas trees (yes i do do that, it makes us laugh), giving everyone a cracker and putting the santa salt and pepper shakers on the table, roles that we wordlessly assigned ourselves years before we realised we had.
I just, i love christmas. And i apologise for just throwing a load of words at you but here is a very very crazy insight into what it is about christmas that i thoroughly enjoy and thank you for taking time to even ask <33
