Last week, I got my first Christmas card of the year! It was from the UK, the sender figured since I live so far away… (close to the North Pole!) It’d take at least two months to get to me; I got it in a week. It’s only a month to Christmas so this must be it’s Christmas season!

This afternoon I went to find a mailing box that will fit my mom’s Christmas stuff. Notice how I didn’t say present? It’s more of things she’d use during Christmas; we got her a whole bunch of sweets. Including her favourites. She claims they’re the best chocolates on earth, I hadn’t seen them in ages (they didn’t have them in the States) I remember Christmases of long ago (before the family unit crumbled) when those tins filled with chocolates were as much a part of tradition as my mom’s cake-in-custard thingy.

I miss my father most during Christmas (Don’t worry it’s not like he’s dead or anything, we’re just estranged). I guess it’s probably because I’ve spent more Christmases with him than any other person, and most of the traditions I’ve come to think of as mine are really what I picked up from him. It’s astounding how much of our parents we inevitably become even when we don’t want to.

I religiously send out UNICEF Christmas cards, not because I want to help needy children in third world countries but because it’s what my father always did. I remember one Christmas when it was just us, he ordered so many presents from this Danish mail order catalogue that we spent our whole Christmas driving around trying to get rid of bottles and bottles of wines and spirits. Then another Christmas we stayed up all night eating burnt old stale crackers because we’d just moved.

But then I remember the Christmas he sent me to his sister’s because he was too busy getting re-married, where I met his father (for the first time) who instantly transferred his disapproval of his son on to me. Or the other Christmas where my stepmonster locked me out of the house and he pretended he didn’t know.

On second thoughts I don’t’ think I miss him all that much!

~[m-w’s word of the day]~

PLAYING: Watch this – Swollen members

READING: Crawling at night – Nani Power

WATCHING: The Guardian

QUOTE: “What good is a goal if you stay below it”