Well, my pretties, the holidays are over - I hope you all had a lovely break and spent some quality time with your family and friends. In my case, I had originally planned to ignore the whole thing, but then I decided that it would be far more fun to sulk my way through it and really embrace my inner Scrooge - and here I quote the fabulous Charles Dickens:
"Every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart."
Hee! So I laid my Grinchy little plans accordingly - to stay home, cook up a festive feast for myself on the 23rd (so that I could eat leftovers and not have to lift a finger for the 24th and 25th), watch lots of Christmas movies (but skip all the endings with their festive, life-affirming crap), and drink a ridiculous amount of wine. And you know what? That's exactly what I did and it was awesome. It was made even more awesome because two of my lovely friends back in Toronto sent me a surprise care package of chocolates and champagne, which arrived on Christmas Eve morning (and was therefore my breakfast - well, obviously).
Seriously, this was probably the most relaxed Christmas I've ever had - didn't go anywhere, so no travel stress; didn't buy a single present, so no shopping stress (all right, being totally broke is kinda stressful, but I'm used to that by now); didn't have guests over, so no entertaining stress. I didn't even bother to get any form of Christmas tree - I thought I might throw some tinsel at my ficus ("throw some tinsel at my ficus?" Well, there's a nifty phrase - it sounds vaguely filthy, doesn't it?) but I couldn't even be bothered to do that. I ate and drank and watched exactly what I wanted, I skyped and socialized with a few people so that I wasn't a total hermit and generally had a terrific time. But it's all about perspective - about fifteen years ago, I spent Christmas Eve in the hospital having a big needle shoved into my spine, followed by a week of headaches so severe that the pain kept making me vomit. So, for me, any Christmas not involving a spinal tap is a damn festive one...
