Monday 25 December 2017

It's Christmas!!!

Sorry if you are offended this post's palpably banal title, but what more can I possibly say? Christmas only comes once a year so, like many others, I find myself quite speechless when it arrives in its tinsel-covered and festive glory! As much as I try to generate enthusiasm ahead of my birthday each year, Christmas is undoubtedly in a different league, perhaps because it is the one occasion which seems to bring people together in not only my local community, but almost the entire world. And, to be quite candor, I love the feeling of sharing moments (as well as presents and treats because who wouldn't?) with others, which justifies my fervent passion for Christmas.

If anything, Christmas represents an opportunity to escape the perils and events which act out like a stage production in real life for a blissful while which, whether we realise it or not, we definitely need. After a couple of jam-packed months which have been overloaded with essays, exams and many now-emptied pens (for I can never resist the urge to write more necessary!), I am in need of a bit of chill out time ahead of the new year and, unfortunately, a wave of mock exams before I sit my real ones next summer. Yay, I groan in the most enthusiastic voice you'll ever hear (sense my deadpan sense of humour here?). Anyway, let's put away all thoughts of exams and revision aside for today (until the typically dire post-Christmas TV schedules bore me to a 'peaceful death', as in the words of Keats, in which case revising the sociological theories surrounding green crime might actually be entertaining!), and focus on the matter (or should I say 'celebration') at hand: Christmas!!!

Currently, I'm writing this midday through the afternoon - the perfect gap between the exhilaration of unwrapping the presents earlier this morning and awaiting Christmas dinner, which is honestly the greatest meal of the year! Unlike many people in the UK, I am a self-confessed brussel sprouts addict (if my ardous labour of peeling them the other day proves anything!) and only wish that they were available all year around - a declaration which I'm sure would arouse a great outcry among some! But all of us have preferences when it comes to Christmas traditions, whether it is Christmas pudding (too rich for me!), pigs in blankets (2017 has tragically marked the end of my love for bacon!) or indeed brussel sprouts (more and more for me!), so I like being able to pick and mix which ones suit me best!

It has only just dawned on me that this is my first Christmas as an adult, which strikes me as very strange because, neatly eleven months since I turned 18, I don't really feel like an adult. In fact, my heart felt like it had been plunged into a lake of solid ice when I found that my stocking had not been filled with little gifts this morning because, for my entire childhood, it had always been a festive tradition to wake up early and try to open the presents in my stocking as quietly as possible before my parents would get up. Fearing that my empty stocking this morning was a sign that I had finally grown too 'old' for such festive traditions, relief later flooded over me when it turned out that my mum had simply forgotten to sort out my stocking! Yet, if today's misunderstanding taught me anything, it is the point that time flies by so quickly. Just several Christmases ago, I was receiving my first make-up sets, making my first descent into adolescence... And here I am a couple of years later, a fully-fledged adult (who knows how to put her eyeliner on a bit better than her 14 year old self did!). This makes me appreciate Christmas all the more because it is the climax of a year which is abound with changes and developments in our lives, which I suppose we don't fully realise until we reach the end of the year and look ahead to the future, wondering and planning what we will do.

In fact, I haven't really felr as festive as I usually do this year, although such indifferent sentiments have certainly abatted since seeing the traditional symbols of Christmas - the cooked turkey (in the recently repaired oven, so luckily we won't be facing Christmas with a broken oven unlike 2010!), endless stream of American festive films (which, if it was any other time of the year, I'd gladly avoid, but I'm somewhat tempted to watch at this time of year) and festive decorations adorned throughout my house, many of which are familar sights from my younger years and arouse a smile from my lips. It is just so easily to get caught up in the bustle of everyday life without taking out enough time to literally breathe in the air (the festive one, that is) and savour the moment, but I guess that was inevitable given that I'm currently in my final (and sadly hardest) year of my school.

Yet what keeps me motivated is that, hopefully, my hard work should pay next year, which will be an extraordinary Christmas gift in itself! And to think that I'll be a university student next Christmas excites me very much... but I'll still be one with a hopefully full stocking!

Anyway, let's get back to the fun that is Christmas Day - and Merry Christmas to you all!