Tag: festive season

#oneaday, Day 343: Boxing Day

Christmas is over for another year, and so here we are on Boxing Day (or actually the day after if you’re operating on UK time)—a day which apparently isn’t particularly well-known in the US. In all honesty, it’s not particularly well-known in the UK, either, aside from the name. It’s just “the day after Christmas”.

There’s plenty of things that can be done on Boxing Day, and they tend to vary according to your age.

If you’re a young kid, Boxing Day is a day to spend playing with all the presents you got and suffering from some pretty severe analysis paralysis while you work out what to do next. When you have the amount of choice most kids get these days after receiving a veritable truckload of presents, it’s easy to see how they might get overwhelmed with things to choose from.

If you’re a bit older, Boxing Day is probably a day for a hangover, whether it be caused by excess of alcohol, excess of food or, more likely, both. It also marks the beginning of The Great Leftovers Season, by the end of which you will never, ever want to see turkey ever again, whether it’s on a plate with potatoes and gravy, stuffed into a sandwich, made into a curry or whatever vaguely inventive ways you’ve come up with to use turkey. Turkey is, of course, a meat which barely gets eaten throughout the rest of the year. Is this because it’s just like an enormous dry chicken? Or is it because we eat so much of it throughout the holiday season that no-one can bear the thought of eating it again at any point in the rest of the year?

It’s a pretty universal constant whatever your age, though, that the day after Christmas is for resting, sleeping, lolling on the couch (the original meaning of lolling, not the Internet meaning) and watching the DVDs that were inevitably in your Christmas stockings.

There’s an exception, though: households which got a Wii or Kinect for Christmas. The Wii and Kinect get people up and about a little bit more than they would otherwise be, since they’re popular gifts with kids and adults alike, and they require that you get off your turkey-filled ass and jump around. Quite literally in the case of Kinect.

Incidentally, if you are still a Kinect doubter, I defy you not to at least find the damn thing clever as hell. Yesterday we were trying it out and didn’t have enough space to play with two people on Kinect Adventures, so we moved the couch back a bit. By the time we’d turned back to the screen, the game was asking if we’d like to play two-player mode. Without us telling it. Witchcraft and sorcery!

Hope you’ve all had a suitably festive festive season and have some appropriately awesome plans for the new year. 2011 better not suck as much as 2010, though I recall saying something very similar at the end of 2009 so I’m not going to hold my breath until something actually awesome happens!

#oneaday, Day 324: Humbug

It’s easy to be cynical about Christmas these days, given that it starts in mid-September and proceeds to get increasingly more present in the months leading up to December until it is eventually omnipresent. (Happy, Mr Hussick?) By the time it actually arrives, people are so thoroughly sick of the whole “Christmas” thing that they just want it over and done with for another few months until the whole thing starts over again.

It’s not like that for everyone, of course. I doubt that the kids out there are as cynical about Christmas. I certainly wasn’t when I was a kid; Christmas was a time to be excited. There was a different atmosphere about the whole day, and not just the tangible excitement over getting presents or eating copious amounts of turkey dinner. It felt like a special day when nothing could possibly go wrong, when it would be impossible for Bad Things of any description to happen.

I haven’t felt like that for years now. I forget the last time I felt that way, but I’m pretty sure it was back in my childhood. Perhaps there’s more to be said for the belief in Santa Claus than people give credit for. It doesn’t help that the last few Christmases I’ve had were pretty underwhelming at best and downright unpleasant at worst. The Christmas that I had to work over and then spent the best part of Christmas week lying in bed alone suffering with a strong bout of flu—proper flu, the “can’t get up because your whole body aches too much” flu—was a particular lowlight, but the events of the past year haven’t made me particularly feel like celebrating anything at any point.

I am spending this Christmas abroad, though, away from this cold, grey, depressing land. I’ll be over in the States, where I’ll be spending most of the time with my family, including my brother, his wife and his kids, whom I haven’t seen for some time. I saw John earlier this year, but it’s still been a while. I’ll also be spending at least one weekend with my very good friend Mr Chris Whittington, former host of the Squadron of Shame SquadCast, and hopefully we’ll get the chance to put together a special seasonal/end-of-year show for everyone to enjoy. Then we can kick 2010’s ass out the door and let it rot in the gutter like it deserves to.

I seem to recall having similar thoughts at the beginning of this year; that 2009 had been, on the whole, shitty for most people involved including myself, and many of us started 2010 with hope for the future. I can say with some confidence right now that I’m just happy to get to the end of each day at the moment. Any time I’ve had a bit of long-term hope for the future, what with job interviews for positions I’d give my right arm for, those hopes have ended up being dashed for one reason or another. So right now it appears to be something of a case of taking each day as it comes and hoping something good eventually happens.

Not a great way to do things, but little else I can do right now. So you’ll forgive me if I’m not exactly full of festive cheer.