Tis The Season

In 7 days it will be Xmas day. It's a strange sort of christmas but one that I am looking to enjoy because I will be with my youngest son and my girlfriend for a whole week. We are spending it in Garrigill in the cottage and we are going to have a traditional christmas with joy & laughter, pressies, home cooked christmas dinner, log fires and I hope a smattering of snow.
I don't usually get into christmas early, and I can't say I will ever be one of these people that puts the decorations up in November or early December. For me christmas usually starts when we have the works christmas party and that was just a few days ago.
This one was better than the last couple of parties were for me because I went without a companion to the last two. This year, not the case :-) This year I am with someone sociable who dances and joins in and my eldest son also works with me so he and Kasha got to do a bit of mad dancing together when my feet gave out.

I always had a good christmas as a child. I am lucky that I have lovely parents who always did their best and tried to make things special. That magic sort of goes away for a few years in youth when you spend christmas away or alone but it soon comes back when you have children and they make the magic happen all over again.

My youngest is 15 now and I imagine in a few years that he will be making his own Christmas without me and my christmas day will become more sedate, and quiet but at least not lonely.
I was thinking back a little earlier, last year was quite a bad christmas day. Since the end of my marriage we have passed Kieran about on Christmas day, and last year I woke to an empty house because he was with his mum until lunch time.
At that time I was a month out of another relationship and I felt pretty low counting the minutes until he walked through the door with my mind wandering to other places and wondering what it was like to not be sitting there with nobody. Of course I wasn't the only person in the world that was going through that, and at this time of year the media doesn't help with the adverts of family and friends and people together. The sharing message is not what you want to see when you are 'not through choice alone'.
My...how different things are just a year in the future.

I am looking forward to going home tonight, I have a box of decorations that will be placed in special places around the cottage, I will laugh as someones face goes grumpy and grimacy (in fun) because she likes a pagan christmas, but I will find crowns of oak and holly and we will mix evergreens with Coca Cola santa and bouncy snowmen and see what comes.

At least this year I have access to a real chimney which is always important for the leaving of the mince pie.