Trying to be thematic

Since there are six more days until Christmas, I thought I'd post once a day about six memorable Christmases I've had in the past.

Or rather, I had been thinking for a while about doing a series of posts like that, and I figured I should make at least on of them about a time from my childhood, and you know what? That completely put me off the idea. But I'm going to do it anyway, in the hope that once I've got this post out of the way, the rest of them will be fun and make me feel that Christmas spirit again.

The problem is, Christmases when I was little weren't any fun. Christmas with a father who is the vicar of a spread-out country parish (so that Christmas involved driving around like a lunatic to hold services and take communion to little old ladies, getting home in the late afternoon and collapsing on the couch) and two parents who are clinically depressed (and inclined to randomly stop taking their medication), is just not a place you want to be.

The one benefit of this is that I have been able to cook absolutely killer hams, Christmas cakes and mince pies since I was about 10 years old (since if I didn't do it, nobody else would).

But I'm going to gloss over all of that and move on to the happy Christmas memories. Here's a run-down of the highlights to come:

Christmas 1998: I meet Geekman's parents for the first time and embarrass myself twice in the first hour.

Christmas 2000: Ten Christmas dinners and all of them stewed moose.

Christmas 2002: Playing beach cricket in Switzerland.

Christmas 2004: Charlie Brown's Christmas tree.

Christmas 2005: One ten-year-old gets put off alcohol for life.


Hmm... It looks like Christmas has been memorable and fun every second year since 1998 (I have absolutely no recollection of what happened on any of the odd-numbered Christmas years apart from last year).

Hopefully that bodes well for the one to come...