Q: How are you expecting Christmas to be this year?
A: A very reserved affair, a meal, swapping of presents, then chatting and going home. My sister and brother in law already said they cant come, my aunt is out also, and my mum hasn't joined us for many years, so its down to 5 of us now, me, my brother and his fiancé, and my dad and his girlfriend (appropriately aged, in case anyone is picturing a 90 year old with a 20 year old girlfriend)
Q: As an adult do you still get excited about Christmas, if so, why?
A: I do, mainly because of the Christmas challenge, last year my brother did Taskmaster, he did the graphics, ran the challenges in advance, edited it all together so we did the panel part of the show for Christmas voting and talking about our challenges. But for Christmas itself, not really, everything that I felt made Christmas special, we don't do anymore.
Q: Are you annoyed that there won't likely be any Christmas parties for work etc this year?
A: There is a good chance our work WILL have a Christmas party, we are one of those non-essential essential workers (essential enough to still be working through both lockdowns to support the essential workers, but not essential enough to be called essential workers ourselves it seems) so we can just call end-of-day early one day and share some cake and music.
Q: What would be a perfect Christmas day for you?
A: My mum is from Norway so we celebrate on Christmas Eve usually, or at least we used to, our Christmases lost a lot of what they were when my mum left my dad (and the country), all the traditional stuff left, and my brother did great to start a new tradition of Christmas challenges (seriously, he spends months preparing, and it shows!) But I think a perfect Christmas for me right now would be to have one of those old traditional Christmases back, just once. Choir music in the background, a fun meal of salted meats and sausage (apparently the Norwegian norm) and family joking with each other, then presents and a film.
Christmases under my brother's direction are always fun, but its more of a production than a family gathering now, and all traditional religious Christmas stuff is vetoed by him as he is one of those born again atheists who will call bullshit every time Christianity is mentioned.
Q: What have you bought so far for Christmas or how many cards have you posted/received?
A: I have done almost nothing, I should actually get moving on this, its just been one hell of a busy year this year.
Q: What is your favourite Christmas movie or song?
A:
For a Christmas song, it
has to be Fairy-tale of New York, though it doesn't really feel like Christmas to me without the OLD classics, the religious choir songs.
As for Christmas movies, there are so many to choose from: Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Gremlins, you name it
Q: The FOOD!!! What will Christmas dinner be?
A: IF we do manage to get together, my aunt has sent the host (my brother) a large amount of Christmas food to unfreeze and cook on the day, he hasn't told us much, but it will include ribs. Also, if the food is from my Aunt, she has definitely ordered it from somewhere extremely expensive, and probably from somewhere with a Royal Warrant like Donald Russel. (She sent me a care package from there not too long ago, and the food is VERY rich...)
Does anyone have any good or positive memories of Christmas when you were little, feel free to share them with us.
When I was very little we would go to Norway to visit my mum's parents for Christmas every other year, they had a lovely house with a long driveway, massive garden (by London standards) and part of the wood behind the house was theirs. We would go to church in the morning, come back and play in the snow, some years if you lay down in it, you could vanish, a couple of years we would even make a full-sized igloo with my dad. When we got too cold we would come in and sit by the log fire and eat uniquely Norwegian treats and wait for dinner cooked by Mormor (Grandmother in Norwegian, literally "Mum's Mum"), which was always amazing. When we were called to the table Morfar (Mum's Dad) would pick up the desert spoon and ask us what it was, he would do this every time, and he would always tell us "It is a prophet, it means desert is coming" Then we would eat and desert
would come, and he would usher it in with "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream" because whatever it was, there would be ice cream on the side. Then when we were finished eating and talking, we would all help clean up, and only after everything was cleaned and put away would be
run into the lounge and open presents all together as a family with Christian traditional Christmas songs playing in the background.
These Christmases were so perfect that it doesn't feel like Christmas anymore without a fire, Christian music and Norwegian food shared together with a large family. I miss those times every year, but since Mormor is long dead and Mum left* and has turned into a conspiracy nut and my brother rebels against anything Christian, and without my mum or Mormor around the Norwegian stuff isn't don't anymore, it just hasn't been Christmas for years.
The biggest loss of all was definitely Mormor, I know this sounds biased since she is family, but she was something truly special, you dont see people like her anymore. She made christmas in Norway, she cooked all the food, baked the bread, organised everything, she was selfless and kind, she didnt have a cruel or callous bone in her whole body, and she was HYPER religious without needing to throw it in people's faces all the time... oh and she was the most stubborn human being I have ever met! Even when her leg has to be amputated and she was riddled with arthritis she wouldnt let anyone else brew a pot of tea or get food from the kitchen, SHE was the host, so SHE would get it for you, and no arguments!
*to be fair, when I said my mum left, I was 25 when she left my dad so its not like its a broken home situation