Thirsty Thursday: Our bespoke, treat-sized Christmas
Sarah McCarthy’s Thirsty Thursday column is brought to you each week thanks to Invercargill-based law firm Mee & Henry Law.
Sarah McCarthy’s Thirsty Thursday column is brought to you each week thanks to Invercargill-based law firm Mee & Henry Law
THIRSTY THURSDAY 34
Merry merry! Someone said that to me yesterday and I am obsessed. There’s tinsel everywhere and every morning we gather to open our advent calendars under the tree -well, the boys and Mr mr and even the dog do, but not me, as I am an unloved extra in my own home. And the little one finishes school today and I know what I am getting for his teacher (WINE - his choice.
Every time I do something silly at home, like can’t find something or forget what I’m saying half way through a sentence, even early in the morning, he asks if I have had seven glasses of wine, which is oddly specific. But that is a problem for 2025 Sarah ha ha ha stupid cow) and in theory I will be finished all of my work by this afternoon and will be ON HOLIDAY. Which means I can start cooking and cleaning.
Merry merry!
This is the time of year where my soothing lists become instruments of doom and my whole life is organised down to the minute, all subject to the diktat of a list I made when I wasn’t tired and overwhelmed and hateful. Nobody is allowed to make any plans that involve me unless they’ve been written in the Big Book, as I may be already scheduled to stir something or scrub the weird thing off the bottom of the bath or find the cupboard door.
I am also engaged in an angry and frankly hurtful conversation with myself about whether or not I need, or even like, Baileys, which is taking up quite some time - and this is unscheduled time so I’ve been waking up early in the morning to puzzle it out and definitely not secretly watching Tik Toks about the drone activity in New Jersey.
I remember the first Christmas I properly hosted years and years ago at our old house, long before babies and dogs, when we were first married, and the chickens just wouldn’t cook and my mother-in-law uttered the now-famous line that gets trotted out when anything is taking too long - “well, a lot of people are cooking”. I gave up in despair half way through the day and drank half a bottle of bourbon. I miss bourbon. Why did I stop drinking bourbon? I have become at one om shanti with my inner bogan so why shouldn’t I, precious? Hmmm. Another puzzle. But who has the time?
It’s funny, now I host Christmas every year and it’s little and sweet and the boys thunder around and have a wonderful time and I cook lots of fiddly things and hide in the kitchen with my cooking wine and my cooking Bloody Marys.
I know that for some readers that this will be a first Christmas for you, one way or the other.
There may be less or more people at your table, or less on your table or under the tree. I think we spend a lot of time imagining that there is only one way to celebrate, and that certain traditions are sacrosanct and that if your day can’t be held up to fit the outline of Christmases in the past then it is a failure in some way.
That’s not true, although it’s taken me years to learn this. I now know that my boys only know our Christmas, with the early morning present frenzy, the mad rush to Grandad’s for breakfast (where I eat all the Scorched Almonds I can find) and the long, lazy afternoon where they are free to enjoy their loot while the adults sip and chop and chat, and visitors drop in and then we have dinner and then it’s all hazy and I start thinking about fried new potatoes for lunch the next day.
They aren’t missing out on anything with our bespoke, treat-sized Christmas (ah yes, see that spin? This is the magnificence offered by McCarthy Media and Communications HMU but not until mid-January).
Change tunnels new pathways in your brain and helps you to become and remain flexible as the years slip by, so that you won’t rail against new shops or experiences or road layouts or languages and instead be a person who is, as you really, really are, constantly changing, twinkling, like the light of a star.
Or a plasmoid.
I hate the idea of tradition as a prison. It should be a wide, open space, constantly changing, twinkling, shimmering, added to and rearranged and full of possibility. But always, always Scorched Almonds. And you, Phil, you big tit.
Merry merry!
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