Happy Christmas

Three little words I’d never thought I’d end up writing in the same sentence: December, Netherlands, warm.

Yes I’ve just returned from a last minute Christmas shop and I’m positively boiling, despite the fact that I replaced big winter coat with middleweight jacket. I even wore canvas shoes instead of boots. Yesterday,it was warm enough to sit outside when I met up with a couple of friends for lunch, and we didn’t even need the patio heater and blankets provided by most Dutch cafes for those hardy souls who will brave the outdoors whatever the weather  (aka smokers). 

There’s part of me that thinks this is great, and another part which wonders if I am being lulled into false sense of security. Short term, of course, there is the worry that the price of all this pre-Christmas warmth will be a big New Year freeze – and of course long term, the worry about global warming. And in any case, if I am going to have unusually high temperatures I’d like them in the summer please – not the winter. It’s all right basking in the sunshine now, but where was it June and July? It certainly wasn’t shining in the Netherlands (incidentally a lot of Dutch people  think the summer of 2015 will go down as a good one, which is very worrying).

But despite the warmth, Haarlem is finally feeling very festive. Albert Heijn have introduced their range of feestdagen goodies – chicken roulades, pork joints and some very suspect looking stuffed eggs and ornate pats of butter-cream in a display that takes up only one end of a cold-cabinet.  After watching BBC2’s Back In Time for Christmas (Back in Time for Dinner has to be one of my fav programmes of the year) I realise I have become commercially brainwashed by Christmas in the UK and the ‘need’ to go overboard to stock up on Christmas gifts and goodies.  Here in the Netherlands they do it the old fashioned way. Christmas doesn’t begin until the week before the 25th December; there is no need for mammoth shopping expeditions and crazy check-out queues. There I was bemoaning the whole I can’t buy any decent wrapping paper thing, and now I realise, so what? It’s wrapping paper. You rip it off and put it in the bin. It’s what’s inside that counts – and even that doesn’t really matter. The Dutch give each other very little in the way of presents. What is important  about this time of year is counting your blessings, not your gifts, and spending time with the people you love and care about.

This Christmas will be extra special for my family because we will actually all be together in the UK at the same time. It doesn't happen every year. 

So children, if you don’t like the way I've wrapped your present, and in fact your present isn't what you wanted at all, remember the real treat is being with me. 

Happy Christmas!