Opinion : Is a simple Christmas with a few friends best?

Well, that’s it. Work is over and the Christmas festivities beckon.

No doubt the town centre will be extra busy this year with Christmas Eve falling on a Saturday. I wish the best of luck to anyone brave enough (or should that be foolish enough?) to venture into the town centre when Christmas Even falls on a Saturday.

However my good self suspects there will be quite a few bargains to be had. While the gifts and presents seem to have flown off the shelves in some shops in others there still seems to be quite a bit of stock left, particularly festive food, Christmas cakes and tins of chocolates.

Thankfully all my food, presents and festive fare has already been purchased so your humble servant can sit back, relax and imagine the mayhem that will shortly be taking place in the town centre.

Sadly I fear the true meaning of Christmas has been lost. It should be a time to reflect on the underlying religious message and the reasons why we celebrate however Christmas has become a commercial extravaganza when the shopkeepers try to extract as much money as possible over the run up to Christmas and the Boxing Day sales that follow.

Christmas should be about sharing time with friends, family and neighbours. Indeed this year that is exactly the approach that yours truly will be taking.

Rather than visiting a neighbours house this year the party is going to be at my own ancestral home, I’ve even invited several gusts and will be attempting to cook a turkey, however a little help may be required from someone who knows more about how the oven works than myself.

It has been a very long and tiring few weeks preparing for a Christmas party and getting my ancestral home ready for visitors. Cleaning, dusting, washing crockery, polishing the silver…. By George! When I look back so much has been done but it was worth it.

Even when friends do come together for Christmas there are so many distractions and more often than not they all just end up sitting around watching the television in silence, overeating and drinking excessive amounts of alcohol (or, as I prefer to call it, Luficer’s urine).

There is so much more to life than televisions, getting drunk and eating too much food.

Regular readers will know that my good self does not have a television, so we will need to make our own entertainment. A good old fashioned sing-a-long, a reading of poetry or a game of billiards is far more enjoyable that sitting in front of a television

Why not invite the neighbours from next door around too? After all surely the whole point of Christmas is goodwill to all men and it’s the ideal opportunity to build bridges within local communities.

It’s time for me to go now. So may I wish you a Merry Christmas and Peaceful New Year, as usual I will of course be publishing a special Christmas Day blog at 3.00pm on Sunday 25th December 2016.

What do you think?

Don’t forget my special Christmas Day blog will be published at 3.00pm on Sunday 25th December 2016.

*My blogs are published every Tuesday and Friday evening around 8.00pm here on the WycombeToday.com website.

You can also follow me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ivor.wycombe or on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Ivor_Wycombe.