You'd think, with all the Christmas and Solstice themed books I've been reading recently, that I must really love Christmas. And I sort of do; I like candles and fairy lights and the smell of pine indoors, and carol singing and huddling up against the darkness until the sun returns, and I like having a nice long break from work and getting back to find that I don't have an exploding inbox because everyone else has been off too.

Christmas itself, on the other hand, is always going to feel like somebody else's festival; a day with a hollow at its heart where the specialness should be, where I feel awkward and out of place and like I should really leave it to the people who it matters to, but it's too ubiquitous for that. I find giving presents horribly stressful, because I'm never sure if I've chosen the right things, and I find getting presents incredibly awkward. (T and I stopped doing Christmas presents years ago, which definitely makes things easier.)

I'm much happier when Christmas is over; Boxing Day and today (the Boxing Day of Boxing Day) have been nice relaxed days involving bubble and squeak and cheese and generally grazing on leftovers, making a start on sewing a pair of yellow cord trousers, and watching undemanding TV. And it looks as though we may still be able to visit my parents at the end of the week, which I had feared was starting to look unlikely. (Not that I'm sure, in general, that I'm happy that the government seem to be sticking with their strategy of just letting everyone get COVID, but here we are.)

My festive socialising has now concluded with a very pleasant lunch with my team on Thursday and a lovely party at coughingbear and hano's house last night, where there was lovely food and lovelier people and I managed to catch the 22:06 train home with three minutes to spare (particularly good news as the 22:35 was cancelled) and be in bed before midnight. And now we're past the solstice and the days are getting infinitesimally longer, and the house is full of candles and fairy lights to ward off the darkness, and I don't have to go out (unless the weather is nice enough to go for a walk) or interact with anyone other than T for a week and a half, which is definitely a Good Thing.

As always, I have made a donation to charity instead of sending Christmas cards (though we get fewer and fewer of those every year anyway). I have to admit that this year's choice of Mermaids was at least partly prompted by realising that it would be an excellent way to troll my transphobic relatives on FB, as well as by my outrage at the TERF campaign which has prompted a "reconsideration" of their Lottery grant (my email in support elicited a response referring me to the Big Lottery Fund's statement on the issue, which seemed somewhat circular as it was the statement that had prompted the email) and my general feeling that any organisation helping children and young people to be themselves and not spend years trying to force themselves into ill-fitting socially-accepted shapes until they finally break down in middle age and have to try to unravel years of conditioning to work out who they really are has to be a Good Thing.

Working in higher education, I can handily circumvent the Merry-Christmas-or-Happy-Holidays question by just saying "have a lovely break", as the last week in December is basically the one time in the year when pretty much everyone takes at least some time off and stops emailing; in any case, I wish you all a very happy and peaceful time over the next few days, whatever you do or don't celebrate.