It's hard to be entirely sure, of course, because there were so many childhood ones which have all blurred into one now, but looking back through my LJ it seems that Christmas 2004 was pretty much everything I could possibly ask for. I was in the middle of my year working at Queen's University Belfast at the time, and had had a gruelling first term there, but the Christmas vacation meant a welcome respite from that, and the general warm feeling of a return to the comforts of the childhood home. It also seems to have brought a perfect combination of Christmas activities and events as follows, which I really enjoyed throwing myself into:
I guess it fell in that precious window when my sister and I were both grown-up enough to be participating in Christmas as full adults, and yet with few enough responsibilities for it to be an extended festive period rather than a few snatched days, while my parents were still both in full health and we had no reason to believe that that wouldn't continue to be the case for many years to come. Not, as it turned out, entirely true, but I am glad that we had such Christmases while we could.
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- Christmas meal with my Bristol undergraduate buddies in London
- Travelling straight up to Birmingham afterwards for my Dad's 60th birthday, and finding that even though he'd been saying it wasn't important and he didn't mind if I wasn't there, he had saved opening all his presents until I arrived that evening
- One of the best ever of the family Christmas parties which we used to host at my parent's home in Birmingham
- A carol event on the village green opposite my primary school, complete with incredibly cute children from that school singing 'Away in a Manger' in Brummie accents
- Roast duck, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on TV and actual snow on Christmas day
I guess it fell in that precious window when my sister and I were both grown-up enough to be participating in Christmas as full adults, and yet with few enough responsibilities for it to be an extended festive period rather than a few snatched days, while my parents were still both in full health and we had no reason to believe that that wouldn't continue to be the case for many years to come. Not, as it turned out, entirely true, but I am glad that we had such Christmases while we could.
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Date: Monday, 3 December 2012 13:06 (UTC)That is very lovely :-)