It´s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Well, it´s almost Christmas time folks so time to talk about what Christmas is like overseas. Plenty of real and funny anecdotes await you in today´s episode and did you know that Ginger Gerald has "TOD"! Want to know what that is - then listen in and enjoy! 

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Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s Festive Special of Ginger Gerald You Lucky Barstard -  It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

You must know people who say things like “I can´t wait for Christmas to be over” or “It’s just become over commercial” or “it´s lost it´s real meaning” - well I am not one of those people ok? I love a bit of Christmas – what´s not to love? You get to spend more time with your family, you get a few extra days off work, you get a load of new socks, you eat and drink far too much and you even get some Christmas Cracker jokes to keep you going for another year or so! It´s fab. 

Now I do understand that some people may have very good reason not to enjoy this time of year – maybe someone´s no longer there who had been there the previous year, or people get super stressed about money or entertaining, or people feel lonely – and I am really sorry about that – it sounds awful and I know that Ginger Gerald is, currently at least, a lucky Barstard but I´m also aware that this could be any one of us at some point. But some people, let´s be frank and honest here, are just miserable barstards too – and we shouldn´t let them off the hook. Call ´em out for it I say haha

I´ve always really liked Christmas. As a kid it was great fun – there were so many of us at home and Christmas was always very traditional – carols, tinsel, the tree, baubels, Christmas cards, midnight mass, sherry, turkey, brussel sprouts, mince pies and, of course, on Christmas morning, a bunch of prezzies. A really full and complete set of Christmas traditions which I absolutely loved and got really excited about. Even the traditional tangerine (or satsuma) in the stocking was great! 

There were so many of us in our family that we didn´t get big, expensive presents – but we did get quite a lot of small ones like colouring books, laces for your footy boots, a mini table tennis set, a chocolate tool box, a torch complete with batteries. One year I realized I´d thrown away a present that I´d not spotted so I spent what seemed like hours desperately digging through all of the wrapping paper and rubbish until, success, I found it. I unwrapped the hidden little gem, a sort of value added surprise, and was over the moon to discover……… a pencil sharpener – you know, one of them that caught the shaving bits so you could sharpen a bunch of pencils and then empty it later. State of the art! I´d be the envy of my entire class.

One year I was just so overwhelmed with anticipation that I made a plan to wake up in the middle of the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and furtively pop downstairs while my parents were sleeping to open one of my prezzies – just one mind, I didn´t want to spoil all of the surprises that lay ahead, but I was just too impatient to wait until the next morning. So, the plan went perfectly, I tiptoed downstairs and opened one present, the smallest one I could find that had my name on it as quietly as I possibly could, and in it I found…………. some black and red ribbons. Ribbons! Black and red? I was just so disappointed – what the hell was I getting ribbons for? I wanted to cry and shout out to get this problem resolved immediately - but it was the middle of the night and I shouldn´t have been there at all so of course I couldn´t do that.  I rewrapped the present and went stealthily back to bed. Well, I couldn´t sleep could I, I spent all the rest of the night trying to work out why Santa (or my parents I´m not sure how old I was at this point) had got me black and red ribbons. My best theory was that it was a mistake and they were meant for one of my brothers – but why would they have wanted ribbons? It crossed my mind that a good solution might be to go and wake my Mum up and advise her in advance of the obvious mistake. Well fortunately I didn´t do that, I´m pleased to say, or Christmas morning might have got off to a particularly bad start……. Anyway, hours later and with the whole family and my grandma all gathered around, I eventually opened this gift (I went to it first, of course), and I had to open it as though I´d never seen it before. As I looked up in bewilderment, speechless, at my Mum she was very quick to explain that these black and red ribbons were to be sewn onto the sides of my white football shorts to turn them into Stoke City shorts! Of course! I was so relieved – why hadn´t I thought of that! Made my Christmas (sort of!!).

Anyway, I´ve always liked a tradition and, I guess like most families, you go creating your own “family” traditions. What you eat, when you eat it, who sits where (that´s always a lively one) who does what and when, the giving and receiving of presents etc etc. Probably lots of families have the very same family routines – but you don´t know that, so they feel like they´re just yours. And I get a bit anxious and stressed when there is even a hint or suggestion that any particular traditional element might be wiped off the agenda. I come out in a bit of a panic and a sweat and argue that traditions are not ours to change, they come from a higher power – they are untouchable, how can you possibly even consider changing anything……I don´t always win the argument tho!

My first overseas Christmas, which then became 5 consecutive Christmases were as a ski rep in the Alps. We always found somewhere to have a great big Traditional Roast Dinner, we usually scrounged ourselves a free dinner by selling the night out to our customers – but I have to say the best thing about Xmas was hitting the slopes as early as possible the next day, getting that very first chairlift and being alone on the Mountain. Same was true for New Year´s Day. Absolutely fabulous – if you´ve never done it – it´s highly recommended!

Before we moved overseas, we spent a few Christmases as a family at Center Parcs in the UK. That was back in the days when you didn´t need to take out a 2nd mortgage to stay at Center Parcs. It was always absolutely fabulous. We could recreate all of our own home Christmas traditions perfectly in our little lodge and invite others to come and join in from time to time. Plus the added benefit of having a whole load of sports and activities thrown in – oh and you could have as many drinks as you wanted and still cycle home!

So when we moved overseas we´d set the bar pretty high in terms of having a good time at Christmas and, of course, we tried to keep all of our traditions going and recreate the Christmases that everyone was used to. But that´s not always so easy – partly because often, particularly when we were in México, the 25th December really didn´t look or feel like Christmas! It was invariably a boiling hot day, we were in T shirts and shorts and most people celebrated in the evening of 24th December not during the day of the 25th anyway. So already that felt a bit odd. And, of course, when you are that far away, you can´t always have all the family members you usually have or you want to be there. One year one of the kids missed their flight and we all got into a bit of a panic – but she ended up landing here at 11.30 at night on the 24th – oh well at least she made it! That, for us, has always been the saddest part of Christmas Overseas – not having certain family members with us who would love to have been there and, at some point, may well have their own Families and Family traditions of their own which we´ll need to work around. This year we´ve hit gold – all the kids (who, as you know, are not really kids any more) will all be here in Mallorca with us which is fantastic news for us!

We all like a bit of a sing song in our family. The two girls have fabulous voices, really amazing – and then there´s EJ, T and me – well, we love having a go but we´re not quite so gifted. Anyway the run up to Christmas means one thing – carols. You´ve gotta love ´em haven´t you and we all have our favourites. Mine are Good King Wenseslas and We 3 Kings of Orient Are but everyone has their own favourites don´t they – some try to sneak in a few “Christmas songs” and pretend they are carols like “we wish you a merry  Christmas” or “Jingle Bells” but I´m never so keen on those – I think that´s cheating. Breaking the rules I call it. Anyway, for our first Christmas in Cancún we decided that we would go Carol singing. That´d be a laugh we thought and surely everyone would be up for it and understand what we were up to – sharing a bit of the Christmas spirit and festivities. Well, as it turned out nobody had a clue what we were doing, or why, but, don´t you worry, we went ahead anyway. And instead of knocking at people´s doors we decided to go from hotel to hotel along the Cancún Hotel strip. For those who don´t know, most hotels in Cancún have some sort of security at their entrance to keep out the riff raff so the first hurdle was to be allowed to drive in. Well, it wasn´t so tricky to make up some story or other about picking someone up or going to the spa or something so we tended to get in fairly easily. And most hotels have huge open plan lobbies with reception and often a lobby bar – so at 5 or 6pm on 24th December they were packed. Our modus operandi was to pull up right outside the lobby, as close as possible, lower the car windows and sing our selected Christmas carol at the top of our voices. It was so funny! Most people didn´t get the relevance at all and they just looked at us like we were mad – but the odd one or two joined in. To be fair, the security staff took it all in good spirits as they ushered us off the premises and we headed next door to have another go!  Poor EJ was only little then – I guess he must have been 5, and he was so embarrassed at his parents and siblings behaviour that he hid in the back of the car so he couldn´t be seen! 

Despite the heat in México, we still wanted to keep the Christmas Dinner tradition going on the 25th – so each year we had the fun (and some difficulty) trying to get hold of the special ingredients we needed. Like Brussel Sprouts for example – I am no big fan of them, but I still like to have a couple on my plate! Yep, it´s a tradition! Sometimes people had to smuggle things in for us like stuffing mix or cranberry jelly. One year, someone tried to bring in Christmas Crackers and got their bag opened at Customs. When they were asked what the crackers were, they explained about the hats and the jokes and the entire Christmas Cracker tradition – but also made the minor mistake of mentioning that they go bang when you open them! Anyway, either the Customs officer was being nice or he was being a bit dim, I´m not sure which – but we got our crackers! 

Another year, which I can remember like it was yesterday but in fact it was about 15 years ago, turned out to be a complete disaster. We had absolutely everything we needed – all the veg, including the brussels, nice lumpy bread sauce, absolutely everything and a fabulous looking Turkey – large enough to feed about 3 times the number of people who were going to sit down for dinner. Dinner this year was going to be tremendous – everything was prepped (including parboiled potatoes ready for the award winning roasties), we were on time, early drinks were already in hand so what could possible go wrong…… Gas. That´s what could and did go wrong. We ran out of gas. In many places, including México, gas doesn´t come through pipes you need bottles.. And as most people didn´t use ovens for anything – nobody had, or owned up to having, a spare bottle of gas to help us out and the chances of a Christmas Morning Gas bottle delivery were zero. Oh dear, this was not good news at all and we were already on our way to being half cut at this stage. No problem, I piped up, as I grabbed our small Barbecue on Wheels and fired her up with charcoal. 6 hours and at least 3 bags of charcoal later, the bird was still raw, the parboiled potatoes wouldn´t mash properly and Christmas Dinner was pretty much wiped off the agenda. How disappointing for everyone……

Another year everything was perfect until we pulled our Gammon out of the oven, complete with its honey glaze, only to realize that it was a very over cooked and dry roast pork!! You´d have thought we´d have learnt by then!

Another event that very quickly became a Christmas tradition for us was the Christmas Day dip. ie a swim in the pool. This tradition was born in our Center Parcs years and, when we moved to Mexico, this made so much sense – it was hot, we always ate a lot of hot food so a refreshing dip in the pool was just the most natural and pleasant thing to do. After doing this for a few consecutive years at Center Parcs and then every year for 8 years in Cancún, it became a fixed asset on the Christmas Tradition list – not something that we had the power to change any longer; out of our control. So when we moved to Mallorca, it was simply an unspoken fact that we would be wearing our Santa hats and having a dip on Christmas day – of course we would – and the pics and videos would duly be sent via Whatsapp and Facebook to make our UK families and friends jealous. Lovely plan. Except we had overlooked a minor detail. The first Christmas we were in Mallorca, there was snow on the ground at our house. Snow – that hadn´t even crossed my mind. So suddenly this lovely, practical and very pleasant tradition changed somewhat and those of us, like Ginger Gerald here with TOD (that´s Tradition Obsessive Disorder) started to panic a little. But it still had to be done!  Now I´m very proud to say that we have kept this tradition going for the last 8 years in Mallorca, every year the water is freezing – but some years it´s worse than others, and it will most certainly continue this year – but (a) we take it in turns to be the cameraman nowadays which is a very coveted role and (b) we have a hot shower running in advance of the big plunge and a pile of big fluffy towels waiting! 

So I hope this little selection of anecdotes and realities about Christmas overseas has got you into a festive mood! If you´ve not done it already, get the tree up, get some Carols on Spotify and go find your lovely Christmas Jumper. How many of you will be having your Christmases Overseas this year? Well, I hope you´re not going to break any of your traditions – that would really worry me to stress me out just to hear about that! And for all my listeners down under don´t forget to post your Xmas family pics before we even get to Christmas here in Europe – I know you all love doing that! 

I hope you´ve enjoyed this festive special of Ginger Gerald you lucky Barstard. Have a great week and I´ll speak to you soon.