Christmas and New Year's Eve

[AndreaDraco]

Hey guys! Just a quick question out of curiosity: what are you going to do for Christmas and New Year's Eve?

[Tawmis]

Driving to San Jose to see the wife's family. Our friend, Paul, is coming with us, because his ex-wife will have their kid for two weeks, and he just needs some company (not to mention I could use his, since her fam's Vietnamese, and speak it more often than they speak English).

[Jules]

Playing White Elephant, a gift swap game. This time instead of buying a gift that nobody else wants, we're bringing an object from home. It can either be a funny gift or something you'd think your relatives would fight over, in a fun way of course.

Last year, we ended up with the same gift we brought because nobody else wanted anyone else's dumb gift. Who would want a gawdy marble cheese tray with silver handles... in which its main use (at least in my house) is to collect dust?

[misslilo]

Well, I think it's all B*******
I would much rather sit at home with a good movie and pizza, lol.

But, my mother lives close by and kind of like to celebrate it, so I'm going to spend it with her.
We're not doing anything fancy at all and no presents - at least not that day, I hope.
I'll try to be a good daughter and have a nice evening with her.

[Almirena]

I love Christmas... but this year I'm so exhausted that I hope I can just survive it. I've had so many things happening this December, including a 2-week theatrical run in a work that is... er... experimental and weird and non-rewarding. Never again! At the same time, I was finishing a course to become a funeral celebrant, and had to organise a simulated funeral complete with mourners and relatives of the bereaved, and a simulated interview with the family of the bereaved, as well as submit all written work to the college. I had a few other performances, some lingering after-effects of my cumulative illnesses, a problem with one of my main jobs (the HDD acting as server died, and with it all the database information and the very old programme on it, so everyone - including the web maintenance and catalogue designer and resident language expert (me) right down to the publicity person - was called on to try to fill in the blanks from memory, from pieces of paper, etc., while the outside IT people tried to retrieve the data or reinstall the old programme and so on...), and many more things I can't even remember...

So...!

My Christmas.

I am making the Christmas pudding today. I know - it's very late. Ideally a Christmas pudding should be made a month before to let it develop properly. Oh well. This will be a young pudding.

I will make the gingerbread house tomorrow evening after work.

On Tuesday evening I will have a pre-Christmas dinner with a few friends.

Wednesday evening - Christmas Eve for us in Australia. I will go to the German Lutheran church in the city to celebrate Christmas Eve, then go home and make the 8-layer Prinzregententorte, one of the most superb cakes in all of cakedom. Then I will prepare the stuffing for the turkey. My mother and I will get up at 6 and start baking the turkey, as well as preparing the traditional Christmas meal. My father will probably help. My sister and her husband and two adorable children will be coming over for Christmas. There will be music and singing and gift-sharing and tryping to protect the chocolate-bejewelled Christmas tree from my littlest niece, who is a chocolate fiend.

For New Year's Eve, I was thinking about just collapsing, actually...

[Tawmis]

*gives Alm all his strength, love and support to endure this Christmas!*

[Jules]

Al, take this over-sized, large fluffly pillow to fall on when you collapse of overexhaustion!

[Rath Darkblade]

*hands Almirena a 3-mile long, 2-mile wide and 750 acre deep cup of coffee* It's the biggest cup of coffee in the world! I hope this tides you over and that you don't get too exhausted. *smile of encouragement*

Seeing as I'm not Christian, I'm planning to do absolutely nothing for Christmas, except trying to keep cool in the summer heat, and possibly having a barbecue lunch.

[DeadPoolX]

Hey guys! Just a quick question out of curiosity: what are you going to do for Christmas and New Year's Eve?

What am I going to do? Well, I've never eaten reindeer before. Might be a good time to start.

[Rudy]

The idea was to visit my folks and brother in Belgium, but i had to postpone that again (it's been 3 years since i've been there now...). Will go during Spring though.
This year, it's going to be the usual stuff. On Wednesday eve i'm going to a restaurant with my wife, then go home and open up some Christmas presents, and around midnight go to the village with some friends and enjoy the Christmas atmosphere outside (choir, Christmas market, warm wine, traditional food, that kinda stuff).

[AndreaDraco]

Since I'm not a believer, I won't go to any kind of Mass on Christmas Eve. Instead, I'll go out, probably in our usual pub, to wish a merry Christmas to all my friends. Then, I'll probably retire to spend a few hours with my boyfriend and exchange our presents.

On Christmas, I'll have a long lunch with my parents, my grandfather and my uncles. In the early morning we will exchange gifts and then, in the late afternoon, I think I may go out with a couple of friends for a movie or a couple of beers (they; since I'm abstemious I'll drink a hot cup of tea).

On New Year's Eve, my boyfriend will probably go dancing with his brother and his old friends. He invited me, but I'm not for dancing at all and thus I'll probably stay home. I hate this festivity, and I always had: so I'm planning on nothing special. A dinner with a couple of friends maybe, or with my family - I've yet to decide. Then I'll stay up until my boyfriend return to celebrate the New Year with him!

All in all, I can't wait for this period to pass away Festivities always put me in a melancholic mood (they give me the clear impression of the passing of time; and I'm afraid of the passing of time), and I usually like them if they are brief ant so-hyped like Christmas.

[therogue]

I love christmas, I loathe new year's eve. Fireworks and dogs do not mix and back when we had horses new year's eve seriously not fun. As I can't leave the dogs alone new years will be just me, the tv and bunch of dvds.

[Andy Roark]

The wife and I were able to justify skipping the long trip home to Georgia this year and are spending Christmas and New Years Eve together. It's our first stress free, family absent Christmas. My company has shut down for two weeks due to the financial situation so I had to burn two weeks of leave.

The plan is: rewatch our favorite movies, play games, play with the dogs, cook and eat, clean and organize the house, sleep late, go to bed early. I'm finally getting my Pentium II machine up and running with a MS-Dos, Windows 95, Windows 98 dual boot and I've got my classic game archive external HDD wired in. Space Quest 3 got a play through yesterday.

The wife and I are hitting our church's Christmas service tomorrow morning and then going by PetSmart to buy our two dogs the Christmas loot they deserve (bones, tennis balls, rubber chickens).

A few days after New Year's we are heading to Denver for a Cross Canadian Ragweed / Wade Bowen show at a great redneck bar that reminds me of the place Patrick Swayze worked at in Road House. At some point after that I go back to work.

All in all, the perfect Christmas