The Changing Face of Christmas

Over the years I have had many different Christmases, some with family or friends but on many occasions I have had to work. Since leaving school many years ago (1975), I have mostly worked as a chef. This time of year was always a particularly busy one for anyone in the catering trade, and if your catering establishment was not busy during the festive period then something was seriously wrong with that said establishment.

My first Christmas away from home was as a young 19 year old, and was celebrated in Belize, Central America. I tried to phone home, back then you had to book a phone call through the international operator and it took many hours before I could be connected and chat with my parents. Christmas day itself was celebrated in the form of a large barbeque, running for several hours with lots of alcohol being consumed before, during and after.

Over the following years over half of my Christmas days were spent away from home. Many of those holidays where I was working close enough to visit I would arrive tired and late, well after lots of the fun had started (on some occasions the celebration would be all but over).

This memoir is mostly about the past three Christmas days, and how very different they have been. Christmas Day in 2006 was celebrated with my wife's extended family in Tennessee. It was the first time I had met many of these new in laws and an introduction for me to an American Christmas, we visited a show over the weekend before as a large family group, spent the evening of Christmas Eve together before the unwrapping of the Chinese gift exchange. Christmas day and it was a scene of much merriment as gift's were exchanged (this time in the traditional way, and not Chinese exchange style), plenty of food eaten, and new games played. The next day (Boxing Day in the UK), and we all or most of us went up to the ski area close to Gatlinburg for a few hours skiing or snowboarding. Before we all returned to say goodbyes to all those that had 12 or more hour drives ahead of them the next morning to get home.

Christmas 2007 was perhaps my strangest yet, I was working in China. Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL), In China they do not celebrate Christmas, though most of the students I taught were very aware of its existence. My Christmas day last year was spent teaching in two different schools, a very strange experience indeed. Standing up in a class, in front of about 100 children. A very different day indeed. The school we taught in during the afternoon took us out for a meal that evening, as far away from the traditional western Christmas meal as you can get.

So that brings us up to date, this Christmas, today in fact. We are in the UK for this year, we decided to have a quiet day, and it started with a full fry up breakfast. It has been a tradition in my family to start the day in this way. Late morning and we went to the Laundromat, (so maybe this will qualify as the strangest yet.)

We returned home checked our emails, talked to relatives via the phone and then it was up to me to cook dinner. The first Christmas that my wife has been in the UK, so I tried to make it as close as possible to the type of meal I was brought up on, I think she liked it.

And so now we are wondering where we will be this time next year, we are both voting for somewhere hot, that definitely rules out here then.