Christmas present and past

Christmas 2009 was the very first year that we've spent the whole of Christmas day in our own home.

When we were first married we used to travel up to Liverpool to spend Christmas with my family. Even when the kids were little our Christmas Eve was spent crawling up the M6 trying to explain to them that Father Christmas thought that it would be a great idea for us to stay with Nan and Granddad because we didn't have a chimney on our house.

I had reached the grand old age of 35 before before I'd even attempted to cook Christmas lunch in my own kitchen. Only months earlier we had uprooted and moved North and were now only 20 odd miles from my parents and had arranged to drive over to meet up with everyone on Christmas night.

This set the trend for the next 19 years and our Christmas memories were of very early mornings watching excited kids burying the dog under mountains of discarded wrapping paper before they breakfasted on chocolate, me working away in the kitchen preparing the lunch while Dave took the kids round to the neighbours to deliver presents and have the odd gin and tonic along the way (Dave that is not the kids!), then after lunch was cleared away persuading everyone to get changed into their party clothes before loading up the car with presents and food for the party in Liverpool.

We had some great times and could never understand when people would say they had had a 'quiet' Christmas. Ours were always frantic and chaotic and even after Mum and Dad died the tradition of a family time at Christmas was carried on, the first year in Ian's and since then at Annita and John's. Like most extended families it wasn't always practical for all the family to be there but as many of us as possible would get together on Christmas night to exchange gifts, eat, drink and be merry (in my case only on copious amounts of tea - I was the designated driver!)

But this year we spent Christmas in our new home and with the best will in the world I didn't fancy driving the 600 mile round trip on Christmas night. We had a lovely time, eating too much, drinking something other than tea, having the time to prepare a lunch a la Delia with smoked salmon and prawn mousse; roast turkey with all the trimmings, including freshly made cranberry and bread sauces; and to finish off two puddings, the traditional Christmas pud with extra rum and a very potent rum sauce and for those who prepare a lighter touch a lemon and mascapone trifle made with Lemoncello. After all that food it was either fall asleep or get some fresh air, so Dave and I braved the elements and took the dogs down to the beach for a bracing walk along the sea front just in time to see the sun set.

Our day mightn't have started quite as earlier as it used to but the dogs still got buried under the wrapping paper and James and Lesley convinced Claire that it was a family tradition to eat chocolate coins for breakfast. We had a lovely time singing Christmas carols while Clare accompanied us on her new key board and everyone was far too polite to criticise my singing (or maybe they were just worried that if they upset me I wouldn't feed them) and we spent the evening slobbing out, admiring our presents and watching daft movies. We had a smashing day but we did miss seeing all the little ones (who aren't so little any more) but we did raise a toast to them and all those happy memories of Christmas past.