Now that we’ve lied to neighbors and friends about having someone else to eat the Big Dinner with, we can heave a sigh of relief and work on being the tall dark strangers of tradition first-footing over the door sill in time for Hogmanay. The trains aren’t running today, and after spending Christmas with the family (via Skype) all we feel like doing is sitting around sucking down candy canes and self-pity anyway. It was gloriously, blazingly SUNNY on Christmas Day at MY house. We had a brief moment of sun in Glasgow, too, but between the massive building next door and the shallow path of the great orb, we only had light for a couple of hours. Sigh. Such is life.
One friend told us that at least Christmas could still be a holy day, even if we weren’t with our families. I was bewildered by that… do people really think it’s a holy day? Okay, yeah, holi-day, I get that. But all of this “in the bleak midwinter” stuff is ridiculous. A.) It’s not MIDwinter; winter just started, and B.) Since when do shepherds watch their flocks by night “all seated on the ground” in snow? Surely even shepherds have better sense than to sit out in the weather. Jesus was probably born in March or April, when shepherds in Bethlehem actually sit outside with their sheep… during lambing. So it weirded me out to hear someone tell us to have a holy day. I’m voting for March. My birthday is quite a holy time…
All right, enough near-blasphemy. Now that Christmas is over, it’s the time of year for my favorite diet tips. American forefathers gifted us with enough self-righteousness to float any enterprise, and a diet ought to be a snap after that, right? “There is a bony blue-nosed bullet-eyed Puritan inside each one of us and I intend to find mine and put him to work.” And good luck with that…
I suppose I’d better begin channeling my holier-than-thou father, then. You! Put that gingerbread down!