Spend Christmas in a different country

Every year as it got closer to Christmas my parents would have the same conversation.
They would talk about how it was a great expense for just one day and how fed up they became because the weather was so miserable and how one year it would be nice to be waited on for a change.

Christmas is a lot of hard work, particularly when you have people coming for dinner and have a beast of a bird to cook. The general rule of thermodynamics means that the bigger the bird, the earlier you have to rise to get the dinner in the oven so, for the cook, Christmas can be a very long day.

Anyway, one year it was decided that instead of doing the traditional Christmas at home we’d go to Spain and have Christmas in a completely different environment. The group consisted of myself, my sister, my parents and my nan and we were going to spend 3 or 4 days in Salou for our festive season. I have to admit that hindsight is a wonderful thing and looking back I would not do this again. At any other time it would have been a lovely long weekend away, the weather was not brilliant but it was still good enough to walk on the beach but Sunbathing was not really on the agenda. Also, the season was finished so the majority of the bars were closed meaning that we only really had the entertainment and facilities of the hotel available to us. The Christmas dinner itself was OK but you never manage to replicate the whole family vibe when you have a large number of people in a dining area, the whole experience was lacking in atmosphere and the food was not what you would normally have when you and your family have lovingly crafted over it for hours on end but the biggest disappointment was the fact that you can’t just sit and relax afterwards and watch a James Bond Movie or the Queens speech or whatever it is that you decide to tune into as the rooms were simply a bed and a bathroom and the only sitting room available was the hotel bar.

A few years later I spent Christmas in Australia

this was more of the result of a year out rather than a decision to actually spend the festive season in a different country and that was pretty much the same experience apart from when the dessert course came out it turned into a food fight. I have tried to enjoy Christmas in different environments but it all comes down to the simple fact that it just isn’t the same as a Christmas spent at home, in comfortable surroundings with your family around you.