My Enjoyable Laidback Christmas Day

         My Christmas day was very low key but pleasant and enjoyable. In a previous post I briefly described the changes my Christmas day celebrations had gone through. My 71st Christmas is a continuation of the changes. Slow and steady change. No hard and fast lifetime traditions for this boy.


       This year there was only Home Farm Girl and I here for Christmas. Our day was fairly close to a normal daily routine. The old guy got up promptly at 7:00AM and made breakfast. By the time Home Farm Girl made it out for breakfast I was close to finished the crossword puzzle. When Home Farm Girl appeared we wished each other Merry Christmas. A highlight was when our daughter and partner phoned from Chicago to wish us a Merry Christmas. A two hour pleasant chat took place and only ended when they had to get their act together to be ready for the arrival of their only guest ...the mother in law.Usual morning chores were done.

      After lunch dishes were done we decided that gifts should be opened before we forget. Now I have to warn you, Home Farm Girl has been streamlining gift giving and wrapping for quite some time. She got tired of wrapping gifts and more tired of supervising me wrapping gifts so she began wrapping boxes which were stored away to be used again next year. Take a gift and drop it in the box...done! Open a gift?...Open the box. No wrapping paper all over the place. Now gifts for some time have been another development. Home Farm Girl squirrels away things that we buy on a normal basis. Of course , I'm easily fooled and forget what we bought. So what I find in the boxes are socks, slippers, shirts and what ever else that was bought throughout the year. Big surprise for me and low stress all around.


      So after this mini gift opening preparation for the Christmas dinner begins. Our dinners have been cut down for years. No more aspic, five cup salad Christmas pudding, fruit cake and shortbread. We're  down to the basics. This year we decided to have duck with orange sauce. It was super. The pecan pie from the store finished things off nicely
     So we celebrated with a minimum of stress and enjoyed life.