Did I Mention I Hate Christmas?

December means Christmas and in case you didn't read the last post, I hate Christmas. The summons to Christmas parties began spilling out a month ago and after Jo's Christmas frolics, I was over it. I couldn't ignore the fact it was a party and that I had to come along to give my secret Santa present, so I grudgingly came along, present not in hand (I had forgotten it). Simon's house is next door to Alex's where we had Thanksgiving lunch and was built from the same plans, so the party became a repeat of the previous party plus added Christmas shenanigans.

Rob, Maggie and I were the first to arrive so we helped Simon decorate the house with the decorations his predecessor who was a Christmas fanatic, had left him. After strapping plastic poinsettias to his collection of small plastic animals I found a piece of Christmassy fabric in the box and couldn't work out what it was. Simon who's English decided it must be a cape, I thought it was a bonnet and Rob whose also English ascertained it was a skirt apron. It was Maggie the only American in the room that knew what it actually was – a skirt to hide the supports at the bottom of a fake tree and this was affirmed by the Americans who arrived as we put up the tree. I thought it was such a dumb usage for such a mysterious piece of fabric so I continued wearing it as a cape all night.

It's a cape, dammit!

Because the party was a little late in the evening we didn't have dinner but Yuki the baker bought in her famous Christmas cookies and Yukari bought the biscuits she, her small daughter Nat-chan and Sammi made and decorated for us, some more awesome than others.

I see Mrs. Potatohead!

Sammi had planned some games for us to do including a present wrapping game. In this game we teamed up into pairs and were given an empty cardboard box, a roll of wrapping paper, a roll of tape, ribbon and a bow. We had to wrap the box and decorate as a pair and the best decorated box would win. The thing was, there was a time constraint and each person could only use one hand, which led to disaster. I was so focussed on getting everything neat and lined up we ran out of time to properly tie the ribbon let alone put the bow on it. And the winner was Meredith an her husband Matt. It wasn't as cool as Maggie's even in it's uncompleted form, in fact that just gave it more charm in a simplistic, less is more kind of way.

OM NOM NOM!!

Another game we played was one where we would write any sentence we wished on the top of a sheet of A4, then hand it on to the person beside us while accepting the paper from the person before me and draw a picture of the sentence already written. We would then fold back the first picture drawn then pass it on the person in front of us and they would write a sentence describing the picture and continue doing that in a circle until at least three pictures and three sentences had been written per page. I thought I was doing everything properly but after Jo who sat in the circle after me exclaimed “The sentences started getting weird after they passed through Ali,” so apparently what I would call an accurate description of what I see is too twisted. Kinda doesn't surprise me this far in life.

We partied into the night while I cringed through the usual Christmas classics and just before midnight I had had enough and asked for Jenni to take me home or at least to a warm place with no traces of Christmas. At least until the next Christmas party.