Bah Humbug - it's Christmas Day

Bah Humbug!

It's Christmas Day and ...


I came downstairs and where were the presents? The space under the tree was bare.

What just happened?

I rubbed my eyes.

Still no gifts.

So much for all the wrapping and piling them up under the tree.


They'd disappeared into thin air.

Then, I heard a snigger.


And, there it was.

On top of the piano, where Santa's half eaten mince pie normally sat, and Rudolph usually left a half-eaten carrot.

The gifts had been Grinched.

This was a real Bah Humbug.

More later ...

Bah Humbug - It's December again! I've run out of days, and time to write

Oh Bah Humbug. It's Christmas Eve - only just.

Now I've run out of days and time. Tomorrow will be upon us rather soon. Too soon for my liking. And I have not written a Christmassy rhyme.

I have defrosted the turkey, and thought about cooking tomorrow. And that perhaps I might have to take a nap after lunch as eating turkey makes you sleepy.

Which reminds me, Google Translate - you really are quite something when you translate Turkey as Les pays de Dinde. I am still not quite sure what to make of that.

Back to the impending arrival of Christmas Day, which as I write this has already happened in New Zealand. There are photos to prove that Santa has been there already.

It's been raining heavily here, so I hope he has wet-weather tyres and an effective set of anti-lock brakes on his sleigh.

Meanwhile, Santa's elves have finished wrapping the gifts, so I had to take a photo of the tree, with gifts sitting around it.

It made the tree look less ...

well ...

less austere, and more decadent.

Amazing what a pile of Christmas wrapped empty cardboard boxes can do for a tree.

And so, dinner out of the way, we became Scandinavian.

In a time honoured tradition, that involves opening gifts early, just in case the Vikings turn up, we all opened a gift, or two before midnight. It takes the edge of having to wait until the morning.

Some Lego, a t-shirt emblazoned with sarcasm, a book of Spanish curses, a book about Artificial Intelligence, which made me wonder whether the tree had any feelings, and, a gift, I was not allowed to leave until morning - Dr Marten's boots.

I tried them on.

I'd never had Dr Marten's boots before.

Now I felt young.

And they so go with the pink shorts I am wearing.

I was tempted to go to sleep in them, as they are rather comfortable ... it reminded me of the first pair of trainers that the boys' step dad bought our youngest son. He wore them to bed. They were special.

I thought about wearing my boots to bed again. And then the cat jumped in the Doc Marten's shoe box.

Bah Humbug, I shall have to write something more Christmassy and pudding-like tomorrow.

Bah Humbug - It's December again! It's sort of only one day to go ...

Bah Humbug, December 23rd.

Yet again, if I were writing this in the morning, there would be two days to go, so my countdown would be correct, but because it is now the middle of the night, almost, all that is left is tomorrow.

And, as we know, from being told multiple times by our parents, tomorrow never comes. Procrastination is the thief of time. Which brings me to thoughts of New Year resolutions, even if Christmas is not done and dusted.

I suppose as that fateful day draws ever nearer, and will never go away, unless some new world or galactic order decides to ban Christmas from the planet, I began to think about what Christmas meant to me - stuck in the tropics.

Not the over-heated kitchen, food that should not be consumed in tropical climates, the joyous fact I do not have to eat another Brussels sprout - I would be sent to my room for refusing to even contemplate consuming one - and that I shall be the only greedy one eating Christmas pudding, because no one else likes it.

No, I began to think about living nearly 7,000 miles from home, (or 11,000 km, if you insist - and I am British, not American). The novelty of eating Christmas lunch in shorts and a t-shirt melted away, rather like most things do here, and I thought of my friends and what I can remember of my family on the other side of the world.

And then I thought of my sons. Two boys who were born and raised in the tropics. Two boys who may be British by birthright, but who exude such an international and cosmopolitan outlook on life and the world. Two boys who care for what happens to the world and its fragile ecosystem. Two boys whose school friends are either living here from another part of the world, or who are back home now in their own country, or even living somewhere else.

While the world is this vast blue planet with patches of green, brown and yellow strewn across it, it is not so huge for the youth. Not so huge for our future.

Lunchtime today was spent catching up with old friends, friends who had been there when we needed. Friends originally from Australia. Friends who moved to Singapore, and adopted an orphan from Cambodia who became good friends with my boys. Friends who then moved away, and ended up in Holland. Friends who came to Singapore to stay and took time to catch up, as if it was only yesterday that we had said goodbye. Although, obviously with a gem of a daughter now, it is longer than yesterday.


Yet, time had stood still, for a moment.

Until I tried to take a photograph, and my boys were teenagers again, refusing to be caught on camera.

I think, maybe I should put Bah Humbug in a box for a while ...

Bah Humbug - It's December again! 3 or is it actually 2 days to go?

Bah flipping poo Humbug.

I think I don't believe in Father Christmas, any more.

There are, at this moment, only 2 full days left. And, that is because I am writing in the evening, at the end of the day, when essentially there is not much left of the 3rd day before Christmas.

A day that started off searingly hot, rather like a griddle pan, only I was not about to sit around like a steak waiting to be cooked. After a morning of working, I decided that my hair needed trimming - or I might fast end up resembling Einstein, and I might as well paint my toenails pink. They have been orange for over 6 months now. Time for a change of colour, or I shall be deemed boring or too predictable. Mind you, the orange colour did stick out, like a sore toe.

And, just when I thought things were going tickety-boo as posh people say. I dropped my Blackberry Priv in the carpark. It slipped out of my hand as if it was covered in butter. I don't remember butter at the hairdresser, but maybe I missed something ...

Smack.

And a pretty mosaic of lines across the top of the screen. Naturally, I chastised myself with more than a colourful array of expletives. I chastised myself even more, when I was told by some two-bit repair centre that it would take about 10 days to get the part.

Now, I have to debate whether I go to the official BlackBerry service centre, which you cannot call, or whether I chance it with a dodgy repair shop.

This is why I Bah Humbug Christmas. We are enticed to spend money on frippery, and when we need to get something repaired, it takes five times longer than it should, and is no doubt charged at a premium because it is the holiday season.

I am not sure I believe in Father Christmas any more. Father Misery, alright.

I suppose I shall have to simply listen to Greg Lake and try and believe in Father Christmas. At least he made his protest against the commercialisation of Christmas into a song ...

And I still don't have an oven that works. Wonder if the turkey will freeze until next year?

Bah flipping Humbug.

Bah Humbug - It's December again! 4 days to go!

Bah Humbug. 



And, Bah Humbug again. 

Now there are only four more days. I have no oven, I am sure I have forgotten a million and one Christmas cards. 

But then again, that presupposes I have a million and one friends. 



Thankfully, I don't.



Which reminds me of Stonehenge and that today is the Winter Solstice.



Why on earth do we have solstices? There's one in the summer too. It is marked as the shortest day of the year, the start of Winter - although meteorologically, the start of winter is 1st December - along with Advent and the start of me and my Bah Humbugging. 




The solstice is not the actual day, as many would believe, but the specific moment when the sun is over the Tropic of Capricorn. It is the moment when the sun stands still. Well, it seems to, anyway. The Romans thought the sun had stopped, and called it solstitium. 




There's a piece of information to wow your guests with at the dinner table.



The Chinese call 21st December, Dōngzhì. They consume copious amounts of glutinous rice balls, so I am told. I can't blame them, if I was that cold, I'd want to eat copious amounts of glutinous rice balls.



But today, December 21st is not the earliest sunset of the year - that happened a couple of weeks ago. 

Nor is it the coldest day of the year. 

Gosh, if it is supposed to be the coldest day of the year - the rest of the year is going to be boiling hot. 

Even the cat hid behind the plant pots today.




And what has Stonehenge got to do with it all? What has Stonehenge got to do with Christmas for that matter?




As all the news is filled with Druids at Stonehenge, here's a photo I snapped earlier - devoid of Druids.



Bah Humbug, it was too darned hot 1 degree north today.




Some interesting sites with more information about the Solstice:

The winter solstice

Ten things about the solstice

Dongzhi

The Winter Solstice  (there's a great infographic in this article explaining about the equinoxes)

Stonehenge and the Winter Solstice  (in pictures)

Bah Humbug - It's December again! 5 days to go!

Tuesday 20th December, which can mean only one thing. It's that silly 5-4-3-2-1 countdown thing.

Oh, whoops, no it isn't, that's what they do at New Year, when no one is really quite sure what time it is actually. The only way is to turn on the TV, but then again, if you have a delay on your TV which tends to happen with HD TV, you will probably be late for the New Year. One advantage of not knowing what time it really is, means that if your camera doesn't work properly at the allotted time, you can always manufacture a replay and no one will be any the wiser. Believe me, we have done that ...

Five.

And so begins the mad dash.

But I only have two reindeer.

Why does Santa have reindeer? I mean, they don't have wings, unless there is some hidden drone-like engine in there and the antlers are the antennae?

Reindeer are found in the Arctic and can grow to be fairly large - 4 feet tall or well over a metre. They can weigh around 250lbs, or 113kg. They're pretty strong, being able to pull up to twice their weight. 

Well, that sort of makes sense, Santa is rather rotund. 

Santa was first mentioned as flying over the rooftops in 1812 by Washington Irving, but he didn't have any reindeer. And then an anonymous story appeared in New York in 1821, and there were the reindeer.

The one we really have to thank is Clement C Moore and his poem, The Night Before Christmas. All of a sudden, there were 8 reindeer! Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder and Blitzen. 

So, where was Rudolph all this while?

Probably not born, until Gene Autry recorded that rather annoying song, Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, or was it Montgomery Ward's department store in Chicago that gave birth to Rudolph?

Well, I only have two, and they've both got dodgy legs, but I do have some wild-looking glasses.

Bah flipping Humbug.

Bah Humbug - It's December again! 6 days to go!

It's Monday, Monday 19th December. In less than a week, 6 days, it will all be over. We will all have eaten too much, forgotten to unwrap gifts carefully so I can reuse the wrapping paper next year, and realised that half of what we bought each other has just contributed to the clutter that we had decluttered earlier.

As I ponder over the ever-increasing commercialisation of Christmas and whether I really ought to cancel the present buying once and for all, it forced me to reflect upon the origins of exchanging gifts at this time of year.

I mean, yes, I know all about Saint Nicholas and the golden oranges. But not everyone is a poor old man in need of a dowry for all his daughters.

Yes, I know that St Nicholas was well known for his kindness and generosity, taking baskets of food and items to the needy, never asking for anything in return.

And that is just it.

Those gifts from St. Nick were for those in need. If you don't need something, then St Nick shouldn't be visiting you.

The controversial question arose. If we are not in need, then why are we temptingly drawn in by tear-jerking commercials and glitz each year? Unconsciously, we spend the bonus that we were given (or not if you work for yourself), that should probably have gone towards something we needed, or something we don't.

Unless of course, you are a dog ...

And yes, there are a number of other fantastic commercials to rival John Lewis, but they did it first, and if I was that dog, I would want a trampoline too.

Bah flipping Humbug.