I've had spells where I really just wanted Christmas out of the way. I wanted it to be great, but I knew it wouldn't be. It's relentlessly marketed as a rolling feast of fun with all your friends and family, yet there were a sequence of years for me where it it did for me was throw a 100 watt light on the fact that my Dad didn't know what to do without my Mum, my partner had left me and another family member could only cope with the whole break by drinking themselves unconscious.

But not everything stays the same, and this year I'll celebrate it with my wife, 3 step children and a 10+ year sober relative. My dad will join us, frail, a bit confused and strongly coached not to discuss his bowel problems during Christmas dinner. It still all goes on a bit too long for my liking - I'd put the tree up on the 24th and take it down on the 27th if I had my way, but as I'm often reminded, I am turning into a grumpy old git.

I've had a few 'wobbles' myself this Christmas - some feelings of resentment around the expense and effort of presents, cards, trees etc which I could really do without - followed by feelings of guilt about the resentment...

Sometimes it just feels too much like bloody hard work for little reward - but then you see things like Bob and Katy's song, you anticipate the smiles and the feasting on the day itself, how much the kids enjoy the whole shebang - and you realise that the reward is still there, eventually. I also see my parents getting visibly more frail and I'm determined to enjoy these times with them while I still can, because I sense there won't be many more.

I'll still be glad when it's Boxing Day, though!

The pressure and pounding from all sides to be jolly at all times of year is relentless and sometimes overwhelming. I think we often forget that happiness is not the default position of man, and we seem to have pathologised every other emotion.

Merry Christmas!

to you too Jude.

In my experience the odder people are the more they are a force for good. I don't mean they're out fighting crime and saving puppies from drowning. Odd people are those who give something of themselves without conforming to society's pressure to "be normal" or to "fit in". Odd people are often made to feel that they're a square peg in a round hole world. I've no truck with such exclusive terms of membership in life. Give me the wild cards and the jokers in the pack every time, give me the people who loiter in the margins and dig for gold in their own way with their own tools, the people who actually see things differently, from personal experiences that reveal truths as well as fantastical fictions and who, by sharing their unique stories reveal the oddball in all of us.

Different voices in an increasingly homogenised world are to be treasured. The Big Reveal is that being odd is simply being more yourself and true to yourself rather than being what others expect you to be.

Christmas is a time for children. Just so happens that mine are 27 and 30 but still wanting to be 6 and 9 on Christmas Day. The golden rule, when waking at some godly hour, was to wait in the big bed with mum (and whatever wolfhounds we had at the time) while dad creeps downstairs to see if Father Christmas had visited us in the night. Fire turned on and drinks prepared he returns back to bed as the arrival of is Santa is imminent. By the time we ventured downstairs as a family all the available seating was covered in presents.

It's not the same now but we still have those memories. And a Christmas tree. The swines made me put it up honest. All I need now is to get my central heating boiler fixed. Plumber booked for tomorrow.

I'll remember that - it's good advice.

Hope you have a good Christmas as well.

I'm sure that I'll be in here from time to time looking for a quiet interlude of sanity in the midst of the 'festive season' too.

Have a great Christmas, and all the best for the New Year.

I love cooking but am - to say the least - a bit skint. So had to sacrifice good food, wine and that for the last couple of weeks to be able to buy relations presents. Now every time I turn on the telly I see rich chefs cooking lavish Xmas feasts. I can almost smell those turkey juices through my tv.
I also lost my mother to the big C a couple of Xmas's ago. It's never felt the same since. Still, you never know what's coming next.

I love Christmas, but I do feel for people for whom it's a difficult time. Not yer common-or-garden grinches, but people who have good reason to dread it.

I've never been particularly Christmassy. As an adult I've tended to experience mild panic and mild depression at the seemingly impossible task of finding the right presents for people. One year, when I was single, I took myself off to Cornwall for Xmas and new year, on my own, to a village I didn't know (Polperro, it's beautiful). It was in fact the big Millennium bonanza, which I slept through, which I was quite happy about.

Once you become a parent, being Scrooge isn't an option isn't an option (unless you're a genuine misanthrope), and my daughter's enthusiasm is infectious. Still, events, dear boy, events. This year's festivities will be overshadowed by my brother's inexorable slide towards an alcohol-wrought early grave, while my 83 year old mother frets and agonises on the sidelines, the last to accept that there's nothing she can do, and understandably finding it impossible to detach herself. And somehow it seems worse that it's happening at Christmas.

I have the solution to the Christmas blues. Do as I do, be a right miserable old sod all year then no special effort is required to be especially grumpy over the festive period but then I am rather odd.

This has been at various times in an old style Victorian built asylum, a general medical ward, with chronic mental health patients, in care homes with people with dementia, people with Huntington's disease, MND, MS, people who are artificially ventilated, etc. If I've not actually been wiping fevered brows I've been on-call and on all but one Christmas Day I've at least visited a care setting.

This year I left the nursing profession and I'm away for Christmas, I'm not sure how I'm going to feel - to be honest it's strange already - but it'd've been a hell of a lot stranger at home I'm sure.

"No kids, you don't mind working Christmas Day so those with kids can spend it with their family do you Neil?"

Do you know, looking back, I never minded once, I was lucky and had some fabulous times with some wonderful people.

Christmas is a time for families. Which is one reason I never really liked it. One year we went to my sisters for Christmas Day. My father didnt come back till June.

And now I have to spend time with my mother in law, who cannot forgive me for being English. At least I think that's the reason. There might not be one.

So I used to volunteer to work Christmas too if I could. Certainly between Christmas and New Year.

But the GLW loves it, and the twins love it, and slowly I am getting to relax and enjoy it, even if the expense is ruinous and gives me sleepless nights. And this year I have a chest infection and antibiotics to give me an early start on the Chubby Checker for 2012.
But if I can put aside the Scrooge tendencies, it is a time when the family will be together, the kids will be excited and fun will be had. For friends it their first Christmas with their 2 adopted daughters. I don't know which pair is more excited.

Merry Christmas to one and all.

Just finished a four month term of 10 hour, 6 day weeks which seems to have lasted a year, as has the Missus. We've got a fortnight off, but that'll be 5 days in reality as all the stuff we don't have time to do in termtime needs to get done. Christas Day will be a long lie in, semi-zombified meal, some wine and a welcome early night.

I'm 50 next year, and I'm gonna retire the year after that. Another 15 years of a life that's lost almost every bit of pleasure or point due to overwork is one not worth living.

for many reasons. Once again, this year I'll get the excited phone call from my daughter on Christmas Day as she lives with her Mum. I'll see her on Boxing Day. I don't feel sorry for myself. I am in a far more fortunate position than so many others that I just sit and ponder how lucky I am to be here, vaguely healthy and not that far from my loved ones. I don't take any of that for granted.

As at so many other times, our culture pushes us to have the perfect experience at Christmas when, in fact, there is no such thing. So whether you're at home stuffing turkey down your throat, doing a shift like jackthebiscuit or enjoying a running commentary on your father's bowel movements like fortuneight, have the kind of Christmas you would wish for yourself & others. At the very least enjoy the absurdity of it all and look forward to things getting back to normal sometime early in January.

Season's Greetings!

Being Jewish, my love of Christmas is slightly frowned on by some of my acquaintances but their disapproval doesn't bother me in the slightest.

My parents used to own a gift shop, years ago. In the run up to Christmas, they were always rushed off their feet, so my little sister and I would get bundled off to my aunt's to stay for the week before Christmas.

We'd spend the week making nameplates for the Christmas table, drawing up a timetable for the day's activities, and wrapping presents.

My parents shop was open til Xmas Eve, so the first time we'd see them would be Xmas morning when they'd arrive, arms full of presents and hugs. We'd then spend a day together, eating til we felt ill, opening endless gifts, playing games, making excuses not to go on a walk, watching telly and being together.

So, for me, it was always a time of laughter, of spending time with my parents, of being together as a family.

It was always the same crowd: Aunty Ang, Uncle Stanley, Great-Aunt Sadie (who'd normally loudly fart through dinner and ask "Who's he?" throughout any film we watched), Bumpy (my grandfather), Cousin Sara, Mum and Dad and my sister and me.

Things change. My parents eventually sold the shop, split up. We started spending alternate Christmases with each of our parents. Bumpy died, Aunty Sadie died. I got married, as did Sara, and we both had kids. My Dad died. My husband and I split up. My sister got married.

For a while, Christmas lost its sparkle and I even dreaded it some years.

This year, I'm spending Christmas at home with my ex, our daughters, my sister and her husband. (My mum is spending it in Florida with her new boyfriend) And you know what? I'm looking forward to it just as much as I did when I was little.

..as I'm about to embark on my first difficult Christmas in 43 years. My wife lost her Dad on Sunday evening after a long and tortuous battle with a particularly pitiless disease. The funeral is on the 28th, so wading through the seasonal routine with a smile is going to be tough, though the presence of a four and a six year old will make it a lot easier than it might have been. Good post Jude, I'll show the GLW when she gets back home tomorrow - it'll be a real comfort.

Back to business as usual next year.

...even the inevitable row halfway through. I'm very moved by some of the stories posted above and you're all pretty marvelous, even the drunken Uncles. Now, as it's the shortest day may I suggest a bit of Solstice Bells? If I can find it...

but I haven't forgotten how awful it can be.

Our first child died in the November. We knew he was ill and that he wouldn't be getting better but we were hoping that he would live to see Christmas (simply because it was a milestone). To cut a long story short, we found the run up to Christmas unbearable. We took a break to a Muslim country, just to get away from it all, flying back late on Christmas Eve. For Christmas dinner, we ate a Chinese takeaway that tasted like ashes in our mouths. We were absolutely certain that we would never be happy again.

And yet, we are happy. We have had other children and generally been blessed. Part of every Christmas though, is a visit to the cemetery. We won't be the only ones there and for some the hurt is newer and rawer. I guess what I'm rambling towards here is to say don't forget how lucky you are and, if the opportunity presents itself, reach out a hand to those who are less so. A kind word really can light a dark day.

and bring hope - which is what Christmas is for. 'A kind word can really light a dark day' says it all and that's what I was fumbling towards in my OP. Humbled really.

I usually abhor Christmans such an emotional tug of war between competing tribes of relatives and having had a divorce and estrangement from my son it never shapes up well. On top of things my father died this year.

However, having recently come back from Zimbabwe with my son and daughter I trepidatiously suggested it woukld be good to see them at Christmas -assuming some sort of catch up on neutral territory. To my surprise they are now coming to Christmas lunch at my brother's with my Mum and most importantly my new partner of 3 years who has hitherto been black banned by my son. And all apparently with the tacit consent of my ex.

So I wont have my Dad but I will have my kids and I'm hoping that this Christmas will be one of laughter and happy memories.

This year has been difficult. Mostly spent out of work, I'm currently doing a minimum wage temporary job which, due to a tax fuck up on the part of my employers, covers rent and nothing else. Presents have been bought for literally no one except my wife. I can't afford even the secret santa without borrowing.

So I feel poor. Downtrodden. I flog overpriced tat to rich bastards who spend more at my till than I earn in a week. There are moments when, in my head, I am stabbing my customers to death, usually when they are buying shit that costs more than a weeks rent.

But last week there was a family gathering and I spent the weekend playing with some nieces and nephews all under three. I'll repeat the process on Christmas Day after a lovely quiet morning in my flat with my wife. She earns enough that, at least as a unit if not from me, there are some gifts to give. We did finally get married this year, which has been a joy and wonder. Why we didn't do it years ago I do not know. Tonight we're going to the Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery as our Christmas treat.

Most importantly next year already looks better professionally with two concrete work offers, so February's rent might actually get paid. I've gone from dreading the appearance of Christmas this year, to feeling that it just might be the turning point of a mostly dismal time of my life.

So Happy Christmas from someone who had full on grinch descending a fortnight ago, but who now feels whole a lot better.