Merry Christmas 2025

 When I was a child there were three important days at the end of the year and beginning of the next. Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years Day.
Christmas day was the highlight, presents wrapped under the tree not to be opened until after all chores and breakfast was finished. The youngest would have the honour of handing out the presents while everyone sat around.
The Christmas tree was always a pine Dad sourced, cut down and brought home, we'd decorate it with glass baubles, ornaments, tinsel, an angel for the top and these little birds with wire claws that we'd clamp to the branches. Tinsel garlands would stretch across our ceiling from corner to corner and along the walls.
Santa came early sometime through the night, we'd try to stay awake but unfortunately drop off to sleep before the big man arrived and left presents on the foot of our beds. He'd eat the slice of Christmas cake and drink the milk left out for him and be gone without us knowing.
My mother always baked the Christmas cake and iced it with white icing and green coloured icing piped around the edges. The words Merry Christmas piped using icing of either green or red colouring. There was a small nativity scene and pieces of holly for decorations.
She also made the Christmas pudding, boiled in a cloth in the old traditional way. She'd make this two or three months before the big day, I remember it hanging from the kitchen rafters wishing Christmas would come earlier so we didn't have to wait. It contained sixpence and threepence which were considered good luck if you found one in your slice. Not so good for your teeth if you bit into one as my brother found out once.
Christmas dinner was always a big roast meal despite the summer heat in Australia. Duck or Chicken sometimes we'd have roast pork with crackling, accompanied by roast potatoes, roast pumpkin and green peas or beans.
Boxing day, we always referred to as picnic day because that's what it was, Christmas leftovers, packed up and we'd trundle off in the car to some picturesque spot, spread out the blankets and enjoy a cold picnic lunch.
Come New Year it started again, another cake, another pudding in the cloth and the big roast meal.
After all this my mother would take a photo of us children around the tree as a memory before the decorations were removed and the tree taken away.
In later years, the old fashioned values of these days and the trimmings that went with them changed and my mother began serving salads although still with the roast meat. Boxing day became just another day the same as New Year without celebrations although Dad still insisted on sitting up to see the old year out and the new year in.

On that note.
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or however you say it in your neck of the woods for 2025.
Also a happy and prosperous New Year for 2026.