tra la la la la la la! I find the Christmas/New Year holidays soooooooooo stressful! It begins with my wife (who is convinced she is running ‘Santa’s Grotto from our house!) going waaaay overboard, earlier every year. Unfortunately this involves me in no small way, I know I am going to sound like a real ‘grouch’ here but honestly I love , or used to love, Christmas as much as everyone else. There must be at least 10 boxes of Christmas ‘stuff’ which is packed in to the back of one of our stores/sheds, this is always carefully sorted out every year so that we /I dont have to trawl through mountains of other ‘stuff’ to get to it every December. But as the months go past the Christmas ‘stuff’ gets pushed further and further to the back of the store and it means that I have to dig it all out every year. Then the Christmas lights have to go up, outlining the house, it always takes forever to put up and sure as hell there will be dozens of bulbs which need replacing! Then there is the annual battle of the Christmas tree, my wife always wants one at least 3’ bigger than we need, which means that I have to saw 3’ off the bottom of whichever tree she brings home.
Amongst all this festive fun, it is a busy time at work, one of the busiest times of the year. We always give everyone the day off on Christmas Day and also New Years Day and do all the work ourselves. All this and having a Christmas Eve party, Christmas Day lunch and the same at New Year, Party and lunch the next day, I usually have to stay sober and go and collect my mother-in-law and then my mother from the opposite direction, then drive them home again after! I just find it all very stressful and would love a quiet Christmas one year!