It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

Naughty Christmas has sneaked up upon me yet again …. and my mother (who was Mrs Christmas and started her Christmas organisation in January) would be ashamed of me! It’s been such a chaotic and challenging year, perhaps she would forgive me for my lack of effort and enthusiasm and the fact that I'm starting to feel a little bit on Scrooge's side with his Bahhhh Humbug. Nonetheless, time to get the finger out. 

My family in Scotland really celebrated in a big way as I've often mentioned in my Christmas posts, that’s why the more sedate and reflective spirit of Christmas in Germany just doesn’t do it for me. I want a glittering, fun and sometimes raucous celebration with copious Gin and Tonics. My Aunt icing the Christmas cake and using, breaking and bending numerous plastic rulers to do so. Yes, we did have a palette knife for smoothing royal icing but she preferred plastic rulers which melted in the boiling water used to smooth out the surface icing or snapped with the pressure she put on them. Numerous glasses also fell victim to my Aunt's culinary efforts too. 

Our Olfactory  systems (and those of others) were assaulted by the ravishing smells of burnt Petit Fours which she and I made out of the remaining marzipan and forgot under the grill and the onion stuffing made from 10 Kilograms of onions. Traditionally, the job of peeling and chopping the onions was my Dad’s job, believe me he tried everything from diving masks to swimming goggles but nothing stopped the sting of those onions. The smell was also far from ravishing; getting in your hair, clothes and pores. Dad tried working in the garage but somehow the smell of raw onions pervaded every room regardless but it had one great advantage! No one at Midnight Mass (which we always visited and was jam packed) wanted to sit beside us. The taste of all the delicious food however was worth ever plastic ruler and broken glass. 

Ahhh, those Christmas traditions …… I haven’t managed to keep up very many because Christmas is so different here. One however was wrapping gifts in colour co-ordinated wrapping paper. In 30 years of wrapping we had nearly every colour palette you could think of . 30 years ago our black and gold wrapped beauties shocked our neighbours completely! We took turns in selecting the colour schemes and neighbours and friends were always desperate to know what colours we had chosen for the coming year, and Dad who always did his shopping on Christmas Eve didn’t even bother to try, one memorable year getting gifts wrapped in the shop in yellow (his favourite colour) wrapping paper with little yellow lambs gambolling on it. In comparison my colour scheme this year is sedate! Probably because Christmas sneaked up on me, so we’re with gold, silver and white but to be fair I did make an effort to cut the tracing paper snowflakes out myself.