Christmas Eve

Last night the streets were very quiet for a Saturday night.  Tonight however traffic flows as usual, possibly even more than usual as I suspect late last night families gathered while tonight last minute gatherings, preparation for late night church services, retrieving children from Christmas parties and the like force people onto the roads.  
In many homes the crinkling of trinkets and the rustling of paper, neatly parcelled by mum less so by dad is done in hushed tones in a vain effort to stop the brats from peeking in to see what is happening.  Their delusion of Santa long gone.
The delusion of Santa Claus, of if you are middle class Father Christmas, how did we get to this?  From where did we find the Christmas of dreary songs and 'magical extravagansa's' (@Blonde, bouncy TV girls everywhere), snowmen and reindeer?  It's a lie!
Can you imagine Mary and Joseph walking towards Bethlehem singing 'Jingle Bells?'  Picture the three men found on Christmas cards sitting on camels pointing towards a star, would they be singing 'Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow?'  I doubt it somehow.  Note also that such songs usually originate in 'tin pan alley' where the majority were penned by Jewish songwriters, Irving Berlin writing 'White Christmas' for instance.  Tinsel, Christmas trees, origins of the tree begins in eastern and central Europe where pagans once worshipped them, plastic snowmen on Australian beaches, inflatable reindeer in the middle east, flickering coloured lights all offering a 'Christmas feel,'  that special time of the year loved by so many but with nothing behind it bar sentiment and pap!
Bring back Cromwell I say!  Lets be done with all this peripheral nonsense and return to a proper Christmas.  May it be like every other day in this house, miserable!

My Christmas will be quiet especially as the cold I suffered so severely last month has gone to be replaced with a gentle every day cold the sweet lass at work passed on to me.  This limits my joy and ensures my remaining indoors for the next couple of days.  Having stocked up this is fine and not having to go out helps but it is irritating, mild though it is.  
The TV looks as poor as always tomorrow, one church service, Carols from Kings, and back to fifty channels of pap interspersed with kids films which no-one will be able to watch for the noise of the kids breaking things.  Radio 3 looks entertaining and Radio 4 might be passable although I suspect I will wish to have two programmes on at the same time!  Iplayer it is then.  
I will not be alone, the mouse has rummaged through a bin last night for something I foolishly threw in the wrong bin.  He might get a surprise tonight if I put the humane trap in their also.
The traffic is lessening, the kids must be home by now, gifts are being wrapped men warned that the wife/girlfriends gift had better be the right one, men are prepared for socks with vile designs and urged to enjoy mother in laws company again.  I know one man under orders not to accidentally kill any of his grandchildren, and not to take them walking with the dog and forget to bring them back like last time!  He might need the Single Malt whisky he will receive.

I hope your day is a good one and you remember the reason for the season.