I love Christmas, always have done. I'm not a practising Christian (don't hold that against me) but I just love the build up, the colours – red, green, white, gold, the lights, the christmassy images of snow-covered pine trees, log fires, reindeer, snow, candles, christmassy flower arrangements, the friendly Santa faces – it's feel good time for me.
I spent six months in Norway in my youth working on a farm and one day in September we went to the mountains. Imagine my shock horror when the farmer and his sons killed "Rudolph" to replenish their freezer for the winter. I nearly died of shock. I was very English, very green and had only ever seen a reindeer on Christmas cards pulling Santa's sleigh!
Here in Santo Tirso in Portugal, the Christmas window settings have been appearing slowly but surely. The local council have put up all the lights and turned them on (seems earlier this year but I don't mind, they're so beautiful). The loud speakers are set up ready to pipe out Christmas music in the city centre to get everyone in the mood to spend more money. I don't mind, it's nice and people only spend if they want. It's an option which I don't really go in for much but I still like the atmosphere it creates.
I saw someone's balcony decorated with Christmas lights yesterday – the first but haven't seen any Christmas trees yet. They'll appear all of a sudden on 1st December. The Food Bank had their first collection yesterday and I'm waiting for the barrage of "give, give, give" to start but that's part of the deal, right?
I've always enjoyed the build up more than the actual day which I find an anti-climax but again that's OK. I have a almost a month of build up and only one day to get through so seems like more than a fair deal to me. We (the children and I) always used to make our own Christmas cards which was all part of the build up. It was so exciting. Cutting the white cardboard to the right size, folding it, tracing the image, colouring it in, decorating them with sticky gold stars, glitter glue, ribbons. A couple of years, I even embroidered (cross stitched) the special cards for the special people! Now, I wonder where I got the enthusiasm/energy from. Where does it go?
The actual day was always a joy when the children were small and we lived in France on the Swiss border so it invariably snowed on Christmas Eve (heaven!) and my parents always came over to spend two weeks with us. Moving to Portugal changed everything. Gone were the snow-covered Christmas Days. It's never hot up here in the north in December but it can be sunny and warmish or cold and damp. Not the same.
The last couple of Christmases have been non events since my husband died in 2003 but this year, I'm determined to make a go of it. So next weekend, I'm going off to buy my Christmas tree, out will come the decorations which I might have to replace a lot of – one of my cats peed in one of the boxes!!!! – and I'll light the candles. I made mince pies last night, the wood burner is red hot and a delight in my kitchen. There's a blanket on the floor next to it with my two cats curled up, basking in the heat. There's a chicken roasting in the oven and b*gger, the sun's just come out ... Foiled again!
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