So I’m at my parents’ place for Christmas, I’m here for a few days and for the first time it appears that my parents are cluing in that I’m a vegetarian (despite repeatedly affirming that, so I assumed that they got it) and suddenly it seems like the apocalypse because the question essentially boils down to “what do you eat?” which seemed funny to me, in a weird way… a weird way to start off Christmas…

This year has been the first time where at both Thanksgiving and Christmas, it has been just my parents and I. Years past, we would have people over, we would go to other peoples’ houses… this year. It’s the three of us, and considering that Thanksgiving was a gong show, I had fairly low expectations for Christmas… actually, I thought it would be worse because it would be so much more prolonged.

It wasn’t off to a great start by any means, while we don’t do any sort of big dinner or anything, I wasn’t expecting to be the only one eating the meal my mom made (though I know she basically only made it for me). Curry pasta, with ground round and veggies… doesn’t that scream Christmas? what if I ate standing up while my parents played a table game? yeah… it was a tough few hours, and I buried my nose in my book to escape.

6:30 was soon approaching, which was when my mother’s church was holding their candlelight service… let me just say that I do not like this particular church very much, I do not like prosperity gospel teachers, and as such I went in solely because it was one of my mother’s only requests at Christmas. That doesn’t make the service any better, unfortunately. There were 6 terrible female vocalists and one weak male vocalist, they sang all of 2 Christmas songs (out of probably 8 songs), the rest of the songs were completely unfamiliar to me, in between each song was an awful mini-sermon, and the sermon itself was pathetic. I never thought I would ever say that the “special music” numbers of any service would be the best part, but they were… and they weren’t that good. Not to mention that it went entirely too long, for no reason. I know I am a cynical person, and it didn’t help the situation at all, thankfully it has past.

8:15 – we get back to my parents’ house and the reality is that, unlike previous years, no one else is coming to join the three of us. So we plate up some food and eat, then I go downstairs to check what was on TV. D3: The Mighty Ducks had just started, and what could be better than watching a terrible hockey movie on Christmas eve?!? Nothing.

10pm – this is probably the earliest we have ever opened gifts too, and for once I actually had a gift for both of my parents. Like, a legitimate gift (ok, my mom’s wasn’t really great, but she got exactly what she wanted). I was most proud of my dad’s gift: The Montreal Canadiens centennial DVD which has some really awesome footage/interviews (and I secretly also wanted to watch it, so I figured I’d kill a few birds with this stone). If you care at all about what I received, it includes Star Trek on Blu-Ray, a few gift cards, and some cheques from relatives.

10:30 – I make the best suggestion of the evening, ring in the birth of Christ by watching “100 Years of Glory” the feature-length documentary on the DVD set I gave to my dad. 110 minutes covering 100 years of history, really well done with some great interviews. And that’s what brought me and my dad into Christmas day.

1:02am Christmas Day – I end this blog post wishing you a very Merry Christmas