Its Boxing Day here in the UK, an ancient day when long ago tradespeople and the poor were gifted small boxes of money to give them a little extra Christmas cheer.
For many people nowadays it is a day for grabbing a bargain in the Boxing Day shop sales with many items on the High Street half-price.
For me and Missus Moonbase its a day at home to recover from a busy Advent and a lovely Christmas Day at Moonbase Juniors, a day with our baby Grandson we will treasure forever.
Like many of our fellows, its been non-stop shopping and wrapping for weeks in preparation and me and the Missus are pooped out! Missus Moonbase has worked like a Trojan trudging round shops getting prezzies ready for the family whilst I was at work.
So we're relaxing, recuperating and recovering today. I've also picked up another cold for my sins but we have a huge doggy bag of Turkey dinner brought back from yesterday so we don't need to cook.
We are also dog-sitting so that Moonbase Junior and her family can uphold a long-standing tradition by attending a wider family party. Its a tradition our Parents began I imagine in the Fifties after the War when rationing ended in 1954 and that great generation could at last let their hair down and fill their bellies once more.
I certainly remember big family gatherings at my Parent's house on Boxing Day. I was part of a large family back then with five siblings and their children, Grandparents, Parents-in-Law, Aunties, Uncles, cousins and of course Mum and Dad. Every year they were all there at our house on the 26th.
Lots of prezzies had still to be opened too and for those kids like my Nephews and Nieces it was a second Christmas Day. Piles of gifts were eagerly ripped open to reveal Action Men with real hair, April Showers, footballs and dolls. Somewhere I have some photos of these glorious occasions in the early Seventies.
Sadly, they all came to end in 1976 or 1977. My Mum died young and life was never the same again for us. I think the last Boxing Day we all had together was the 26th December 1976 but it could have been a year later. I forget. Still, I had 16 of the most wonderful Christmasses ever with my parents including those big Boxing Day parties. I think those 16 Christmasses helped make me who I am.
Our family including my Dad tried to carry on the Boxing Day tradition after Mum had gone but it was too hard. The family home was sold and grief eroded the Boxing Day tradition and eventually at the end of the Seventies, aged 19, I drifted away from my home town and apart from a twelve month return in 1983 I would never really go back for any length of time.
Since then my older Brother has successfully rekindled the Boxing Day tradition in his beautiful home just a few doors from where we lived as children. For many years many of my North Western siblings now gather at his house on the 26th. It is a day of laughter, board games, turkey curry and an outdoor fire-pit when the night draws in.
I've sampled its festive delights on occasion but having settled nearly one hundred miles away across the Pennines in West Yorkshire thirty years ago it is a long way to go after my own family's celebrations on Christmas Day.
Besides, when you have lived away from your home town for so long like me - forty years - and recall the impenetrable sadness I felt when my Mum died only a few years before I left its hard going back. Its like a time machine travelling there and when I get out of the train or the car its suddenly 1977 again.
I imagine its a form of frozen memory struggling to thaw. Like a scratched record, my mind wants to carry on from where I left off in the Seventies but time and tide have moved and no one else does.
If I had stayed in my home City it may have been different, I don't know, but for me its a ghost town, a busy modern metropolis overlying a glistening but blurred seam of Sixteen distant Christmasses tended by the spirits of Christmas past.
Yet the old traditions survive and its with great pleasure that me and the Missus are looking after Blue dog so that Moonbase Junior, her lovely fella and Moonbase Baby can trundle across the hills to experience the sort of bigger family Boxing Day at my Brothers that I used to love at my Parents.
I hope that you enjoy your Boxing Day wherever you are in the world and I wish you all the very best this Christmas 2017.
Let us know what you are doing!
