Christmases past

All this explaining to people that yes, Christmas this year is a curious shape, but actually our Christmas Day is pretty much as usual, has set me thinking back to previous years: to happy times with friends and family, but also to all the years of rushing from one place to another so that no-one feels slighted, trading a New Year here for a Christmas there, a pre-Christmas birthday visit or a Christmas Eve celebration for the big lunch ... And before that, childhood Christmases visiting uncles; or the year an uncle visiting us set off for home on a snowy morning, and returned the same evening, turned back by the weather. Was that the same year that my mother decided that Christmas decorations chould be extended to paining and wallpapering the sitting room? I don't remember.

I had also forgotten, until J. reminded us yesterday, when we phoned to wish her happy birthday, that exactly ten years ago we had been in Italy helping her to celebrate a significant birthday. Here's a post I wrote at the time, and while this isn't a particularly seasonal picture, I like it.

And here's a bleaker view of a Boxing Day tradition:

Watch on YouTube