We Irish have a special place in our hearts for the festive season. Even the grumpiest of us have to smile at some stage over the holidays, and it gives us a chance to let our hair down and enjoy ourselves without any of the usual guilt that seems to be bred into us!
Every year we give out about how early the shops start to get their decorations ready, while secretly loving the fact the countdown has begun! No doubt you’ve already seen it on your Facebook; someone who claimed what a disgrace it was that Christmas decorations and chocolates have been on the shelves for weeks now. You probably even gave comment a like. You did, didn’t you!! All the while you were sat there like Dr Evil, rubbing your hands together at the thoughts of the tree going up and all of the boxes of Roses and Celebrations that would be floating around the place, waiting for you to sneakily pick at. Shame on you!!
Another thing you’re going to do is get MASSIVELY excited about, and then immediately disappointed by, frost. Yup, we’ve all been there. Stumbling out of bed half asleep. Peeking through the curtains. Catching that first glimpse of white, and turning around excitedly to whoever else is in the room to shout OHMYGODSNOOO….oooooh wait. Nope. Just frost. I’m going back to bed. (Speaking of frost, spare a thought for the guy who has too re-live his most embarrassing moment every year…on the news!!)
Christmas means one thing that’s guaranteed in every household in the country – Mammy’s dinner on steroids! Turkey, ham, sprouts, carrots, gravy, parsnips, peas, stuffing, more gravy, mashed spuds, boiled spuds and roast spuds! Wolf it all down, fall asleep on the couch watching Miracle on 34th Street then do it all over again on Stephen’s day. It’s simply not Christmas in Ireland if you don’t put on a stone and a half, just so you can spend the rest of the year getting fighting fit for next Christmas!
Christmas movies…every year we watch the same ones and every year they get better and better. If you haven’t gotten stupidly excited at the prospect of being allowed to watch Elf again, then you are beyond help! There’s no better way to spend some of those dark nights than watching all your fave movies, curled up on the couch, binging on half a selection box!
While Christmas jumpers have only recently taken off, one thing that every girl has gotten her hands on at Christmas is a novelty hat, though strictly speaking, not always legally! For some reason, whenever you hit the nightclubs at this time of year, you turn into kleptomaniacs who simply HAVE to have a hat that lights up and sings Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer, usually swiped off the head of a poor, unsuspecting drunk guy! If you haven’t “borrowed” a Christmas hat, then whoever is reading this over your shoulder, turning much redder than normal, is the guilty one of your group!
Spontaneous drunken chaos. It’s the time of year when it’s totally ok to go for “a drink” after work, only to resurface 3 days later on one of the Aran Islands with panda eyes, one shoe and someone who looks a lot like you in some very bizarre pictures on your camera. Whether it be the 12 pubs that turns out to be a much higher multiple of that number than you’d ever tell your mammy, or the school reunion that is Stephen’s night in a rugby club that only ever opens for that one shindig, Christmas is the BEST time of year for making memories and catching up with old friends.
Finally, shopping. It’s not like Christmas sneaks up on ya each year, yet that won’t stop all of us from still having 23 presents to buy at 8.50pm on Christmas Eve!! With the likes of Black Friday, Christmas markets, late night openings and umpteen other ways to get your shopping done, you’d think that the madness of last minute spending sprees would be a thing of the past, but each year we still run around Pennys grabbing fluffy slippers and pj’s to squeeze in under the tree and dodging the 50,000 other panicked girls all doing the same thing! Spare a thought for all the guys out there too who had the cheek to suggest you get your sister-in-law a voucher for BTs (we ARE NOT getting someone a voucher for Christmas!!)
(Image courtesy Tumblr, Pinterist, Imgur, Pennys, Youtube)
