Boxing Day

Friday, 26 December 2008

The tradition of Boxing Day is that you gather up all the gifts for people who are not in your own immediate family, especially people at work, and go visiting to delivering happy tidings of the season and your gifts. In America most people go back to work. In Britain this has always been a recuperative day, somewhat like New Year's Day is for some people to do too much celebrating on New Year's Eve.

As we have had a family-only celebration of Christmas Jessy and I decided that we would put Boxing Day to its intended use and drop in on those friends whom we knew would be home. So we were busy little bees all morning and afternoon, seeing Rita (of course), Becky, and Rachel. We said our hellos, delivered our gifts, stayed for a cup of tea and went on to the next house. By about two o'clock we were on our way to Josie's house when the brakes in the Regal began making a horrid noise. I was unsure of what it was and pulled off the road to ring Daddy. He told me to drive a little and have Jessy hold the phone out the window so he could hear it. Then he pronounced it bad break pads and told us we were safe to come home on it. We rang Josie and apologised for postponing our visit. She was it was nothing to worry about and that we could as easily come tomorrow.

When we got home Daddy drove the car and came straight in to make phone calls. I asked him how serious it was and he said it was 'dragging a caliper.' So off went the Regal to the repair place and here I sit with no car for God knows how long. Jessy rang Josie (and they talked for half an hour, almost eliminating any need for an actual visit (if not for the gifts) and finally invited her to our house tomorrow instead of our going there. Afterwards I presume we will be relying on Roger and the long green Cadillac again, at least for the short term.

As for our own Christmas, everyone liked everything they got and we all had a good time all day. We had our traditional waffles for brunch (not pork pie as in Britain-- ugh) and a lovely smoked ham for dinner. In the evening Jessy, Lisa and I st down in the basement TV theatre in our nice warm old-fashioned flannel nightgowns and watched BOTH movies of 'The Traveling Pants' (a family gift from Santa) till about 12.30 am. And yes, Lisa stayed up for the both movies-- and then fell asleep in my lap as we watched the DVD special features.

Gran is down with us, staying in her first-floor room, but will go up to Uncle O--'s on Saturday and visit with our other uncle sometime after Sunday. At 80 she is still going well and we are all proud of her for it. One thing Jessy and I have got from Gran was a pair of tickets to the 'Happy Days' musical playing in Philadelphia in late March. Gran always gets us theatre tickets, and not always to the very heady things but to pop musicals like 'Hairspray' and 'Lion King' and 'My Fair Lady'. This makes a fun time for us.

We will be going away ourselves over the next week, returning to the house on the beach in New Jersey for a few days where we had been over Thanksgiving. From there Daddy has a few engagements for himself and for Mother and we 'kids' will most likely play on the beach and whine about going to the mall. That island is always so remote and desolate in winters. (Not that it's not like that here too!)

I look forward to hearing from all my online friends about their holidays too. Till I meet each of you personally online, have a lovely holiday season and a positive and happy new year. :)

--JC (the twit)

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