Hooray – my favourite day of the year!  The frenzy is nearly over, it’s almost time to kick back and relax and it’s almost too late to buy anything else.

I love Christmas – I always have.  My parents take it very seriously – I once arrived home late one night post school  Christmas dance to find my Mum sewing cotton wool onto invisible thread. Our dog was having the time of his life wrapping himself up in it all.  When I asked her what exactly she was doing, she simply replied, “I’m making snow”.  Beautiful.  Twenty years later that snow still makes a comeback in her living room window.  They moved from the islands to the highlands when I was at university and that first Christmas she had people knocking on her door to find out how she had made the snow.  Trade secret, I could tell you, but then she’d have to kill me.

I embrace a non-traditional Christmas look – I’m allergic to real trees so I have a 7ft navy blue prelit tree decorated with turquoise, blue and silver.  I love it – MrShoeThatAlwaysFits is a bit of a Christmas Bah Humbug so he suffers a lot living with me , but them’s the breaks – tee hee hee.  And whilst we’re on a non-traditional Christmas theme – I don’t make Christmas dinner (and not just because I can’t cook).  My all time favourite meal is curry, luckily, it’s the same for Mr ShoeThatAlwaysFits, so we’ll be settling down on Christmas day (if he’s not working) to champagne, curry and red wine, followed up with a cheese board.  We’ve done that for a few years now and it’s our kind of Christmas day.

We really miss our families, but we’ve done our Christmas visit already and feel totally loved up.  And with the inventions of skype and facetime you’re never really that far away.

Now, I’m away to liven up the office with some Christmas music and a warm mince pie or two.  Merry Christmas one and all, good tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy.