A different sort of Christmas

Christmas means such different things for everyone. For me, it's always meant a time with family and friends, waking up early-ish to open up presents (getting later as I get older), and always always always a Christmas party at the Tan's.

The Christmas party at our house happened every year, had about 60 guests, and in it's early days guests started arriving at about 12, with the last stragglers leaving about 4am. It was a hectic day that involved taking furniture out from under the house, wiping it down, mowing and sweeping the backyard (damn you gumtrees!), not to mention the cooking that Mum and Dad would do in the lead up to Christmas. People would arrive to get their fill of mangoes, lychees, satay, hokkien noodles, crispy pork, curry chicken .... mmmm .... and would depart in the wee hours with our whole family standing on the porch waving good-bye.

I admit that over the years it was often a bit tedious. Having to talk to random aunties/uncles, and being in charge of entertaining the family friends, the ones that you only ever saw once a year and had nothing to say too. Setting up for Christmas and doing chores ... that's always tedious! But it was always still a fun time, mucking around, hanging out with family, watching our uncles/aunties get tipsy and start telling random stories.

Reminiscing about old-times gets me misty eyed. London Christmas this year was still nice - the European cold/dark christmas was still pretty cool, but Christmas day was very wet and we got soaked heading to church in the morning. The church we went to had a really nice quaint service, and the day was pleasant, even if our turkey was a bit dry. The main difference was that it was soo quiet - as London was deserted, friends had other plans and London as a whole had shut down on Christmas day and felt eerily deserted.

I really missed "Christmas" this year - I'm pretty sure I'll be back for Christmas next year.