Iiiiii'm lookin' at a whiiiiiiite Chriistmaaas....

It snowed! It snowed! It snooooooooowed!!!! We must go out to play in it!

Incidentally, I must be the only 21-year-old girl in the country to open her presents and go, "Perfume?? Bwah?" and "Ooh, rocks!!! Dad, look at the agates I got!"

Later.
Headed out in two pairs of socks, cap, scarf, overcoat and wellingtons. Had a slight war better the male and female family members, prompted by a discussion of Wellington, Duke of, while putting on our boots. Nobody seemed to make up their mind whether we were army or navy, but that is a bit of a moot point when all one's cannonalls are actually snow anyway. We started out to build a snowman, but we got cold and it's more like a snow insect. Perhaps we'll go out and finish it when we've done dinner and our under-the-tree presents. We've always had ours in two installments, because it's just too long to wait till midday when you're small, and our parents liked to see us opening the large stuff.

Snowing again! W00t! Philosopher's Stone is on TV this afternoon. The kids look so wee!! Snowman, or Harry Potter. Hmm...hard choice.

Christmas carols, mostly

Presents are all unwrapped, Christmas cake is iced and the turkey in the Aga is refusing to brown. Ah, the joys of Christmas.
Notable presents were new pyjamas, slippers, chocolate, Lord of the Rings Risk and The Ready-made Family.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden talks about which Christmas songs she would eliminate from the collective consciousness.
My choice would be 'Mistletoe and Wine' by Cliff Richard, runners-up 'White Christmas' and 'Rocking around the Christmas tree', and
'Jingle Bell Rock' and 'Little Drummer Boy' as also-rans.I can bear pretty much all traditional carols (especially the pre-Victorian ones), apart from the aforementioned Little Drummer Boy.

And there's only one version of 'Twelve days of Christmas' that does it for me:

Day One

Dear Nuala,
Thank you very much for your lovely present of a partridge in a pear-tree. We’re getting the hang of feeding the partridge now, although it was difficult at first to win its confidence. It bit the mother rather badly on the hand but they’re good friends now and we’re keeping the pear-tree indoors in a bucket. Thank you again.
Yours affectionately,
Gobnait O’Lúnasa

( Days 2-12 )