Christmas Message 2019

Christmas 2019

Christmas 2019 is just ahead of us, in fact just a few hours away. We have already been given the heads up of the Queens speech already, it has been quoted as the Queen saying that 2019 has been a “Bumpy year”. People speculating that refers to Prince Philips car accident and the controversy around Prince Andrew’s friendship with Jeffery Epstein and his ‘Car crash’ interview on the BBC.

I guess since Christmas 2018 many of us have had a bumpy year and no one is immune to those kind of years. If your year wasn’t bumpy then you were very fortunate indeed.

Christmas Reminisces

When you get to a certain age you can’t help but get reminiscent about the Christmas of your youth and childhood. As a teenager and when I was in my twenties I never really appreciated being a part of a family at Christmas time. Now I look back and I realise just how good and important those times where. A lot of my most memorable times where spending Christmas as a family. As I think about it even now it evokes a feeling of happiness that I never truly felt as child because I never appreciated those moments at the time.

Family

When I was younger I imagined nothing would change and that everyone will live forever. I buried the idea of our mortality when down into my subconscious. At this time of year I am more conscious of the people that are no longer here but live on in my memories. I used to think the highlight of Christmas Day was the presents but on reflection it was the moments we spent together as a family.

My Mum was incredible when it came to the Christmas dinner. She would prepare a dinner with turkey, homemade roast potatoes and all the trimmings. She would have prepared the Christmas pudding weeks before laced with a good dose of alcohol and leave it to mature plus making her own Christmas cake that also had brandy in it. She would cover it with marzipan and icing that she would pipe on herself. She would cover it with edible silver baubles and a Santa or a Snowman.

As my sisters got older my mum would prepare Christmas dinner for around eight people which was no small feat and we would all sit around the table to tuck into a full Christmas dinner, Christmas pudding with thick custard (though I always had mine before it got to thick) and lots of wine.

The afternoon was always a sleepy affair for most of the family, mainly due to the wine as well as a large Christmas dinner but later in the day my Grandparents would come to our house and have tea with us, yes we had Christmas tea too. In the evenings my mum would have her snowballs or her favourite Cherry Brandy, which I also drink at this time of year in memory of her. My dad would be in his chair and my sisters and partners would take up the sofa all with their spirit of choice and we would talk, laugh and just be a family.

Christmas Message

I don’t want to go on about consumerism at Christmas or get religious on you but for me Christmas is all about family people and. I enjoy giving and receiving presents but I appreciate the people I love more. My family is scatter all over the place, some in Lincolnshire, some in Scotland and some in Leicestershire but it doesn’t mean that I don’t think of them, appreciate them and love them less.