It's Christmas Eve but not for long.

It’s Christmas Eve, and this Christmas is shaping up to be fabulously unusual for me.    This past week has been utterly relaxing, free from shopping, very low on cooking and cleaning, and generally non-frantic.  Fabulously unusual. 
I’ve almost finished my summer reading library, I’m practising the art of making smoothies in a thermie (by the way, any tips are appreciated), and my kids are so sun-kissed and waterlogged every day that they’re zonked as soon as the see a pillow…and so am I.  

Tomorrow I’m looking forward to seeing my babies faces when they open their gifts, and watching everyone else around the tree too.  My girls have shopped for me with only budgetary guidance, so I’m keen to see what they’ve chosen.  I’m looking forward to the feast which will conclude with a raw, vegan Christmas pud.  I always eat the traditional pudding at Christmas, but not because I love it, mostly for the custard and brandy butter which for me, is always followed by a bit of a dairy hangover the next day.  
I can’t wait to have a little lie down after lunch, probably by the pool while the youngsters splash around and defy all adult understanding with their endless energy, squealing and capacity for fun.  I love the lunch that turns into dinner and the evening that sneaks up when you think its about 4pm.  There’ll be yoga in the morning, and there’ll be feisty conversations.  There’ll be tears and possibly a tantrum….and that’s just the parts of Christmas day that I know about.   
The fabulously unusual?  Well I don’t know those parts yet, but I don’t have to wait long now.  

I hope your Christmas is everything you hope it to be, and many things you didn’t even know you hoped for.   It seems like it has become commonplace to dread Christmas and all it entails.  I agree that the consumerism and the indulgence and maybe even the greed stinks.  But you don’t have to buy into it.  You don’t have to join the chorus that judges the way others spend their Christmas energy.   
With some effort, you can even stay present in your own moment, your own Christmas, your own loved ones, your own heart, your own love.   Ok, it will take a lot of inner effort, but it’s Christmas!!  

See you on the other side.

Love and best wishes,
Jacqi