Growing up, I always loved Christmas Eve more than Christmas Day. It's not that I didn’t enjoy the presents and extra helpings of roast potatoes, but I was more in love with the anticipation that clung in the air, the fizz and excitement, an almost nervy-belly-feeling for what was to come.
The day itself was always spent at my nans house, in preparation for the Christmas Eve buffet and its familiar rituals. Me stacking plates with individual napkins, decanting breadsticks into pint glasses and eating all the broken ones (presentation was important, obviously) and her chopping cherry tomatoes and cucumber for the salad, buttering the Warburtons multi pack of barm cakes and without fail shouting at my Granddad for something or other.
Christmas Eve in my mind still just looks like a foil platter of ham slices neatly arranged and a multi pack of potato salad & coleslaw - the one with were the potatoes are cut into tiny squares and don't even taste like potato anymore. Even though it’s been a good few years since we last had the buffet, due to ill health and the fact that like all things eventually, change occurs, I still miss them feelings and once inbuilt traditions that eventually have become just a passing phase, as people and places and time moves on. On the way home from the buffet, my dad would open the car windows and tell me to listen out for the sleigh bells. I am not ashamed to say that even now when my husband and I are driving home from wherever we've been on Christmas Eve, I put a sleigh bells sound from youtube through the car speakers.
Obviously, this year looks quite different to any other Christmas Eve I’ve had. For starters it’s the first one I’ve chosen to work on because I’ve no plans to put on a dress on and eat cold sausage rolls at a relatives home. There’s no Christmas Eve walk at delemere, which had become a fun tradition in all the years before my husband had a job that required him in work on this day. There will also be none of our accidental tradition of last minute present wrapping; aka me drinking Buck’s Fizz and falling asleep on the couch to love actually, leaving all the wrapping to Martin, as all this extra time means we were pretty much sorted within the first weekend of December.
I’ve decided that with this enforced clean slate of how we celebrate this Christmas, I’m taking up some new Christmas Eve traditions, and perhaps reimagined old favourites. For the first time I’ve had a special 24th December blow dry, so instead of feeling disappointed like I do at around 10:30am every 25th, because I just cannot curl my own hair, I’ll feel fabulously festive and fully glam to sit in the same square inches I’ve spent 9 months of the year working from. I’ve also decided I’m having a “Christmas Eve bath” and that this will become a thing every year. I have no real idea what will be different to a normal bath, but I’ll let you know.
We’re also having a mini Christmas Eve buffet for two, complete with the classic party favourites, and then we will settle down in our new Christmas pyjamas (you are never too old for Christmas Eve pyjamas) and watch It’s Wonderful Life. Given the year we’ve all had, the sentiment seems even more necessary to reflect on.
Whatever you’re doing tonight and over the coming days, have a wonderful time and if you’re spending it alone through no choice of your own, remember that it will all be over soon, and you can take this year to either make some new traditions or completely ignore it. X