It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

There is no time like Christmas, but after an early rush of the Christmas spirit back in November, I now find myself just eight days away from the big event and with a distinct lack of the festive kind of feeling which I would be expecting right about now.

I've pretty much done all of my Christmas shopping - well, apart from the final pre-Christmas grocery shopping, of course. So for my relatives I have dug deep to bring them gifts which I hope they will like. For my friends I have bought nothing, because that's just not how we roll. It's not a choice or hard policy - it's just how it turned out. One less thing to worry about, anyway.

I should be in more of a Christmassy mood today because I have this afternoon had a pre-Christmas exchange of gifts with a delegation of significant relatives. As I speak, in the back seat of their car is my bag of miscellaneous gifts to them, and downstairs in my living room is their box of miscellaneous gifts to me. I could go and open them all right now - hey, we could have opened them all in front of each other during their visit - but it seems more noble to wait until Christmas day proper to open the gifts we have given each other. While this does mean that I won't be able to see the "what on earth is THIS?" looks on people's faces, it will at least give me a chance to get into a more festive mood before the big day.

On the whole I quite like Christmas, and it's not for the presents and stuff - I'm now old enough to truly believe that it's just nice to spend some time with your family, or on your own, and take a bit of a break from things after a busy year. The eating and drinking of things that would not normally be eaten or drinken during the year, and the watching of TV programmes that would not normally be watched - in my case this will usually involve me sitting through Christmas episodes of Emmerdale and EastEnders while I busy myself typing on my laptop. But it's something different - and it's a difference which is special and nice.

I also find myself thinking of last Christmas. I seem to remember spending a lot of time online chatting with people last year. Between that and the insanely impossible work resolution I set myself, for some reason I remember it more than most. The Christmases of years before remind me of long late nights and even longer lie-ins, eating peanuts, American chocolate, alcohol-free wine and imported fizzy drinks. (I like Jolt Cola and Blue Pepsi, but you try getting hold of them in this country..) All fuzzy memories, but nice ones.

I've currently got about a week off work over Christmas - the 25th and 26th come for free, and I've decided to have the rest of that week to myself also. Of course I'm pretty sure that I'll still check my work email during that time, but only when I want to. And I'd imagine that since most other people will probably do exactly the same, it should be a quiet week work-wise.

In between writing these two paragraphs I've logged on to the company Intranet and booked myself out for the whole of the following week too. There, two clear weeks off for Christmas and New Year. Ant returns on January 8th. Yay! I guess I may as well put all these 'leave days' to some kind of use - I never really used them before but I think I'm starting to see the usefulness of them now.

Technically I still have 9 days of leave I could take this year, but there are only 5 days left of this year (5 days that I'd have to work on, anyway) and surely booking any more time off would be greedy. I don't know. Maybe I'll shave a few days off the end of next week as well.. let's see how it goes. Again, maybe there'll be so many people using up their remaining leave allowance next week that there'll be no work to do anyway! Let's see.

Ah yes, it is indeed beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Two weeks off and a nice turkey dinner. Can't wait.