Ready for Christmas

Well, I’ve wrapped the presents, peeled the sprouts, chopped a range of other vegetables and baked a variety of cakes and puddings. All I need to do tomorrow is pot the turkey into the oven and let everything cook nicely. Mind you, it’s not a full turkey; it’s one of those strange things they call a “turkey crown”, in other words a sort of turkey body without wings or legs. Why is it called a “crown”? Whose decision was that? 

It’s that time of year when you field a whole string of questions along the lines of “What can I get for X for Christmas?” Even this morning as I jogged along the local bridle path my phone pinged. It was my son with yet another demand for inspiration. Goodness! It’s hard enough for ME to decide what to buy for some people. And then there’s television. 

Why is it that Christmas makes the programmers believe that we are all brainless idiots who need lots of nonsense like “The Spice Girls’ Story”? Oh, I do know that there is some decent stuff on as well (and that TV as a rule can be pretty mind-numbing) but there is definitely a move to put on stuff that needs little thought. 

As I type this I am listening to reports of further heavy rain about to fall on many parts of the UK. I’m very glad not to be one of the many who are trying to travel around the country and finding that floods have got in their way. And of course there are loads of people trying to do just that: travel to wherever their family is to spend the holiday with them. All this to celebrate the birth of a baby! 

I did hear a man of the church explain on the radio this afternoon that in the early days of Christianity they didn’t really celebrate Christmas at all. Easter, as you might expect, was the important celebration. However, gradually Christmas crept in, replacing the old Roman mid-winter saturnalia. Of course, we’ve known for a while that the timing of Christmas was shifted to match the winter solstice celebrations but the presenter of the programme was a little surprised to hear a man of the cloth state that. He had asked his what Christmas was all about, expecting a lot of stuff about the birth of the baby Jesus and got a rather different answer. 

 Finally, I’ve just read an article in La Voz de Galicia about the Cuadrado family in Ferrol. One of an amazing 40,000 “familias numerosas” in Galicia (what happened to the falling birth rate?), the Cuadrados have 10 children and another on the way. Mar, the mother of this amazing brood who range from 14 years old to twelve months of age, seems remarkably calm about having another on the way. Apparently she always wanted a large family but had thought of five and then just carried on having more! It’s quite daunting to think of being pregnant on and off for about 15 years. The father of the gang is a university professor so we can’t put it down to simple ignorance. 

I bet they have a busy Christmas!