eChristmas?

I'm going to start with a tale of Christmas past, which at least partly explains why Christmas present is the way it is. Think w-a-y back to Christmas 1989. At the time, my first ex-husband and I were living in Egypt with the (then) three children, and we decided that it was the chance of a lifetime to spend Christmas in Jerusalem. However, travelling with three children and rucksacs meant that there was little space for bulky or fragile gifts, so we decided to save the gift-giving till after we returned at Epiphany. It was easy to persuade three children under 8 that since Jesus waited till Epiphany for his presents, they could do the same.

Christmas Midnight Mass in Bethlehem, seeing the New Year in listening to the bells clanging from churches of every denomination imaginable in the Old City of Jerusalem: these memories remain vivid. And in early January we headed back to Cairo and our decorated house and presents under the tree, to discover that our Coptic brothers and sisters in faith celebrate their Christmas on 7th January, so we were more in tune with our neighbours than we'd expected.

We've always kept an Advent fast and not started Christmas celebrating until after dark on Christmas Eve. For the rest of our stay in Egypt, we continued to have modest stockings for the children on Christmas morning, but the rest of the gifts remain under the tree until Epiphany. As part of this, we also dropped the b-i-g meal on Christmas day and moved it to 6th January, leaving the first day of Christmas free for people to eat just what they fancied. We've had some odd things over the years: one year the children were delighted to be allowed to have tinned spaghetti hoops. There was the roast honey and charcoal duck one year, and such humble dishes as egg and chips, welsh rarebit and bacon butties have at some seasonal moment tickled someone's fancy. Last year, second youngest son just had to have a M&S Hoisin Duck Wrap from the sandwich counter, which is actually rather hard to get hold of on Christmas Eve.

When we returned to the UK the children opted to continue our rather odd family Christmas instead of reverting to the usual UK pattern, and over the years it has proved to have all sorts of advantages. Their father, working in a Muslim country, rarely came home for Christmas, but could usually take a week off over the New Year so that our family feast could take place at Epiphany. When I was nursing for a while, it was no hardship to volunteer to work Christmas day, freeing staff with families to spend time cooking, a chore I didn't have to do. As they grew older, the children were always happy to work on Christmas day (for a vastly inflated hourly rate) which helped to keep them solvent. Gift buying could be done in the sales. They could spend Christmas day with boyfriends/girlfriends and their families. And after my ex-husband and I separated, they were able to spend Christmas day with him and his new wife celebrating a conventional Christmas without missing out on our big day. The lazy, piggy anything-goes Christmas day that became our pattern is stress free and easy, and over the years I have come to appreciate how rare a stress-free Christmas is among my acquaintances.

This year, youngest son flew off to Egypt early to spend Christmas with his Dad and step-Mum, and second youngest, who would normally have been home, was instead skiing in Sweden. All three of the older children have flown the nest, so I was planning to have a very low-key time, without the usual tree and decorations. However, youngest son was adamant that the house, the cat and I needed to do it properly to keep the cosmos in balance, so on Christmas Eve I baked mince pies, put up decorations and the tree, and trotted off to Midnight Mass as usual before coming back and opening the tin of Quality Street for my first chocolate since before Advent.

I had Christmas day planned: a long lie in, smoked salmon for breakfast, and then an orgy of West Wing, having treated myself to the boxed set of all seven series on dvd, with plenty of good white wine. It went wrong shortly after the lie-in ended. As I waited for the kettle to boil, I had a few chocolates. And a mince pie. Then a couple more chocolates. By the time the coffee was ready, I didn't much feel like smoked salmon. Second son rang to ask how to cook duck and lamb, and the kids and I sent text messages to one another to say "Merry Christmas".

I turned on the TV, loaded a dvd and settled in to watch West Wing. I'd only watched about 20 minutes when I remembered that second youngest son was going to be out on a ski slope directly in front of a webcam, so I turned on the laptop and squinted at the blurred figures hoping to catch a glimpse of him. In fact I got several good shots which I saved. I'm still amazed that I could watch my son skiing on Christmas Day, and then was able to chat to him on MSN the following day and show him the pictures.

While I was doing that, eldest son arrived and we decided to do gin rather than wine. But then we moved on to coffee and tea - well, if one really can have anything, then that includes choosing the ordinary. Later on, an ex-boyfriend arrived, and then in the evening, son number two and daughter also called in, and we revisited the gin as they chatted to their father and I had a long natter with youngest son, both in Egypt, thanks to Skype. By the time everyone left, I'd watched exactly half of one episode of West Wing, eaten no smoked salmon, and drunk no wine. In order to rescue the plan, I went to get the smoked salmon out for supper, but some thick slices of ham caught my eye, so the salmon was relegated to Boxing Day as I tucked into ham and chips on a tray in front of a couple of episodes.

Eldest son, meanwhile, set off to drop his brother and sister off at their respective friends' houses and then headed off up the motorway to Leeds. The traffic came to a standstill at Junction 37 (it later transpired that a fatal car accident had blocked the road). He doesn't have Satnav, but he has the next best thing: a mobile phone with handsfree, and a Mum with a computer. As we chatted, I took a quick look at Multimap and suggested an alternative route and he headed off home.

And so to bed, and one last thing to do. I picked up the Queen's Christmas message podcast, and fell asleep listening. Something about children, I think...

And of course, this blog is technology-driven - and this photo was taken with my phone. What with SMS, dvds, a webcam, Skype, all-singing all-dancing mobile phones, Multimap, podcasting and Blogger, it's been a technology enabled Christmas. iGod bless us every one!


(Photos: Jerusalem - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7c/West_wing_cast.jpg/200px-West_wing_cast.jpg
and West Wing - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Israel-Jerusalem_Old_City.jpg)