plasticwrap

Best Day of the Year

It's Boxing Day - the longest possible time before more Christmas!

Well yesterday went pretty well, considering. I stayed at my sister's on Xmas Eve but she's pretty sick at the moment so I felt kind of like I was intruding. So I left her asleep on Christmas morning and went around to my parents' place after watching Bob The Builder Christmas Special.

We went to church which I found hilarious. I don't think Mum approved entirely of my levity. I tried to be good :) The pastor was having an "interactive time" with the kids, talking about how Christmas seems to be about Santa and presents but is really around Jesus. "So if Santa brings you presents of toys, and Jesus brings you presents of Love, Hope, Peace and Eternal Joy, who would you rather have?" And a treasure of a child yells immediately "Santa!" The guy was asking for it, really!

The pastor actually seemed to appreciate the humour inherent in religion - he presented the Christmas Reading as a text message on the overhead projector, and then made the congregation read it aloud together:

N da bggng ws da Wrd, an da Wrd ws wt Gd, an da Wrd ws Gd. An da Wrd ws md flsh, an dwlt amng us.

I chose to read phonetically. Loudly.

Then we went home and opened presents. It's always a marathon at our Christmases. I counted it up and worked out that in total, 79 presents were given yesterday. There are too many kids, that's the problem - there are 6 kids in our family so once each person gets one thing for everyone, that's 56 presents for a start. Anyway it took hours. We go for 90 minutes, break for a quick lunch, get back into the gift-giving, and round it off with dessert around 4.00.

I was good at communicating my desires this year and wound up with mainly things I would have bought for myself, which is extremely rare for me at Christmas. Boxed set 3rd season DVDs of The Simpsons, Simpsons desk calendar, Simpsons wall calendar, Simpsons mug, and non-Simpsons-related gel pens, a ceramic serving dish, CD, and watch. The only thing I got that I wouldn't have bought for myself was the CD, but hey, free CD and it has a couple of songs I like. I would have exchanged it except that as soon as I opened it, mum, dad and Jo all asked if they could borrow it :)

So I got back to my place around 7.30 and had a smoke and watched my DVDs. Very relaxing :) Now I have to download all the photos I took yesterday and email them to my brother.

Hope you all had a good day. I'm planning to hit the boxing day sales in a strange act of self-torture. :)

Posted by phreq at December 26, 2003 07:34 AM | TrackBack