three weeks till christmas. Are you ready?

[Callie]

Its tree weeks tomorrow till xmas. AArrrrgh!! Please tell me Im not the only one totally unorganised. So many houses seem to have lights and trees up. Im starting to feel guilty. Iv promised myself I wont buy the tree till 12 days before any earlier and it just wont last the distance.
as for presents , dont get me started! Im being very lazy this year.

[Callie]

oops that should read three not tree. Told you I was feeling guilty.

[Anniemo]

Help - I haven't done a thing for Christmas - can it really only be three weeks away. Still I am using the excuses that we have moved house and had a baby this year. We have relatives coming to stay and the spare bedroom is still piled high with unpacked boxes! They will also have to put up with no carpets and curtains in most of the rooms. Bring out the valium

[Robinw]

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[Suedonim]

You can't put trees up now! It's much, much, much, much too early, they'll be all dusty and the needles will have fallen off by the 25th. Ours goes up on the weekend before Christmas, at the earliest.

I noticed a news item about a campaign to get people to buy real Christmas trees, to help the forestry industry. Doesn't seem five minutes since they were exhorting us to buy artifical ones, to save the world. Hmmm.

[Jodee]

Decided against a tree this year as ds will not be able to resist climbing it or pulling the whole lot over so have a really tacky 12 inch fibre optic jobby on the mantlepiece, lovely.

And am I the only one who hates writing Christmas cards? I don't want to sound like a bah humbug but I think it is such a waste of time, except sending to friends/family who you won't see over the festive season? It's the obsession at work that gets to me of exchanging cards with every tom dick and harry that you hardly speak to from one year to the next. They only go in the bin a week later, what a waste of paper.

[Selja]

I am officially known as bah humbug in my house. I don't believe in Christmas cards because they just go in the bin, if dh would let me get away with it I wouldn't put up Christmas decs and I certainly wouldn't have a tree. We're in for our usual row this year over my refusal to have a tree (we're going away so we don't need one). I fly to Spain a week on Sunday for a month and I haven't got the Christmas cards done, bought presents (including a parcel that has to be sent to Japan), thank you letters for ds' birthday and any finances that are due for the first couple of weeks of January. On top of that I haven't made my list of what to pack, what I need for this holiday etc etc etc. Oh my God there's no time left aagh!!

[Sid]

Well I don't mind doing Christmas cards from friends/ relatives of whom I don't see much and giving them our news and getting theirs, but why does everyone at work give each other cards when we see each other all the time? And what about the children at my 2-year old dd's nursery? Why do they need cards? I reckon it's all part of the competitive Christmas industry, whose aim is not to spread Christmas cheer, but to make others, e.g. people like me, feel inefficient and unfriendly (which is mostly not true, I promise!)

[Slug]

I never send christmas cards its a matter of principal for me. We don't have decorations oe a tree - no space for one. Beside which, we spend Christmas day at the in laws and they have one big enough for both of us. The sluglet is getting a ball of crinkly paper for Christmas, she'll be only two months old, what else does she need? My major problem with the whole thing is that I just can't get used to it being in the winter. I grew up in NZ where Christmas morning was when you saw the neighbourhood kids out on their new bikes and roller skates, comparimg their surfboards.

[Eulalia]

Slug - you got me thinking - why is Christmas geared towards cold countries? Or am I wrong - do you have summery Christmas cards, decorations (sans snow), less stodgy food etc?

I believe in cold countries midwinter festivals and Christmas sort of got mixed up together. What about in NZ - do you celebrate anything in midwinter there?

As for me and being organised - well I tend not to think about it till December. Tree doesn't go up till 2 weeks beforehand, if that. I can't stand the way the shops start decorating in the middle of November, ads on the telly etc so you are sickened of it by the time Christmas actually comes.

The other thing that gets my goat is the way that everything is closed at Christmas - sometimes for 2 weeks. The assumption is that everyone is at home enjoying the sterotypical family sing round the piano. Fair enough but for 2 weeks? I'd like to be able to go for a swim for example. The only choice is to go out and eat (again?) or shop (again, again?). Oh dear I am starting to sound a bit bah humbugish....

[Jodee]

A few of us at work suggested giving the money we would have spent on cards to a charity, but that didn't go down too well with those that must be obeyed - good idea, I thought.

I do try to recycle some of the cards by cutting around them with pinking shears and using them as gift tags next Christmas, what a cheapskate!

[Joe1]

We put our decs up on the December 1st and dh has to get his 'exterior illuminations' up. Ive got 3 pressies for some of the kids in the family and thats it. It will be a mad rush in the last week and weekend before Christmas, which I much prefer. I used to have all my cards written and sent, but now I havnt even got a box yet. Why does it seem that the family cards you buy seem to be more expensive than birthday cards or is it just because you buy them all at once.

[Jj]

Pamina, we don't send Christmas cards, but my favorite ones to get are the once a year family newsletter type ones. We don't get many (any?), but they're always from people who wouldn't write all that stuff down just for us. It's best if they add a short personal note, but fine no matter what. My least favorite are the people who just sign their names! Why waste a perfectly good card? So, anyway, Pamina, print out a million copies of what you've done, stick them in cards and send me one.

We have, I am now ashamed to admit, already put up our tree. It's undecorated, but part of December for us is making decorations for the tree. Fancy it is not! I've still got to get stockings, but have ordered most of my eldest's presents and already given my husband his big one (it was to be a surprise trip to Chicago to see his friends.. now it's a planned trip to Chicago to see his friends). And just ordered the goose today.

On second thought, we are giving the kids at the nursery cards, since it seems the thing to do there.

We've also started drinking the Christmas port.

[Suedonim]

Oh, well, I'll confess to sending out Round Robin letters. This year I've whittled my letter list down to 47 - I simply couldn't write that many letters by hand especially as with a largish family, there's lots to write about. But, even worse, shock horror, I like to receive RR's myself! That's because it's easier on my aging eyes to read print than scrawly handwriting, tee hee.

[Helenmc]

I was a dutiful mum last night and organise the 3 kids card writing session - 40 cards for school friends , I then discovered they had also written some of the nice pictures to themselves ...aaargh.
Trying not to get the kids hyper about the christmas experience- well the advent calandar chocs have been eaten, the christmas bazaar was last week (yes we came home with stuff we'd donated), done by Tesco.com order for sun 23rd (if there's anything left in the store by then), so just cards and 30,000 presents to get. Christmas disco this weekend, No tree as new kittens will destroy it. And I hate christmas cards - you have to find some-where to put them. I love the letters tho'.
but on the whole I LOVE XMAS

[Suedonim]

For those of you who are not looking forward to writing those Christmas letters, here is the answer to your prayer, created by a rather talented friend of mine!
----

Generic Christmas letter:

Dear Friends

Well it seems Old Father Time has been playing tricks on us as usual,and suddenly Christmas is upon us once again and caught me completely
unawares!
Thank goodness for word processors I say, which mean that we can write one completely impersonal letter and send it to everyone, rather than
having to think of something different to say to each and every one of you.
Always the most tiresome of tasks, but duty decrees that I must make some sort of effort to acknowledge your existence at least once a year.

You've probably forgotten the name(s) of my child/children - have a look in your Christmas card, I've written them there - my arm's aching from writing the same bl**dy thing in 150 Christmas cards this year. I really must
do something about paring down my Christmas card list for next year.
Perhaps a house move, and I'll accidentally forget to let most of you know my new address.

Anyhow, back to the family news. XXXX (insert child's name) has now started at nursery/school/secondary school (delete as appropriate), XXXX (insert next child's name) is enjoying his/her swimming/ballet/horse riding
lessons and wants to take up the piano/the saxophone/soft drugs in the New Year.
XXXX (insert baby's name) has recently started
crawling/walking/climbing the furniture and his/her favourite game is emptying the washing
machine/pulling the cat's tail/eating poo, so as you can tell, there's always something
exciting going on in this household.

More family news: XXXX (insert extended family member) has had another baby. Did you ever meet her? Probably not, but it's just possible that
someone on my Christmas letter list met this person once, several years ago, and might
be vaguely interested. My cousin XXXX got married back in the summer, which
was a lovely family occasion (I'm struggling now to think of thing to write to fill up this page - does it show?) though sadly the next time we
all met up was at the funeral of Great Aunt XXXX, who died at the ripe old age of 85/96/108 back in October.

Well here's wishing you a Happy Christmas and all the best for 2001/2002/2003. Perhaps we should meet up at some point next year. However, you know as well as I do that I say that every year at this time, then do absolutely nothing about it, until suddenly it's Christmas again and
another year has past without our seeing one another. Still, I expect that like me, you're completely happy with that arrangement, after all,
being totally honest, we never really got on did we. I mean, if we had really hit it off, we would probably communicate a little more than just once a year.

Still, at least you know I'm thinking about you at this festive time.

Much love
XXXX
xxx

[Jasper]

Suedonim!!!I have only just stopped laughing! That was quite brilliant. I find RR inclusions in xmas cards compulsive reading but only because the only ones I get are so cringeworthy!!
Apologies to those of you who send them and put a lot of thought into them which of course don't fall into this category.
One in particular we get every year is from a friend's mother and it paints a picture of ongoing cozy domestic harmony........the truth is this family is barking mad!! Her marriage is on the verge of collapse and her husband is an alcoholic. And it is enclosed in my second favourite pet xmas card hate....an expensive personally printed card! You know, the type with the house name( up to this point you may not have known the house had a name!) at the top of the address.
Suedonnim I'm off to send your posting to my sister who will have a great laugh at it too.

[Suedonim]

Glad you enjoyed it, Jasper! Do please forward it - my friend is conducting a little experiment. She's asking for it to be sent to as many people as possible so she can see how long (if at all) it takes for it to be forwarded on to her!

My most boring RR is from someone who is into running. Her letter consists of "And we took part in the Somewheretown Half-Marathon, where I shaved three tenths of a second off my record time, while Fred came in seventh, his best ever placing for an autumn run."
As you can imagine, I am riveted when that one comes through the letter box!

[robinw]

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[Marina]

Suedonim, thank you very much for that lovely RR.

[jodee]

Suedonim, that was great! Am circulating as we speak.

[Jbr]

Been ready for months!

[slug]

Eulalia, in NZ santa comes on a surfboard. It is nice and warm and the days are long. There is none of this sitting around the TV having arguments as we tend to have dinner outside. The young un's go to the beach or the river with a large supply of drink. Christmas coincides with the start of the summer holidays and lots of businesses, especially factories have their annual maintenance shutdown then, so the whole family get together makes sense.

[jodee]

Santa Facts - probably known by most of you but good anyway!

No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer, which only Santa has ever seen.

There are 2 billion children in the world (persons under 18). But since Santa doesn't (appear to) handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist children, that reduces the workload by 85% of the total--leaving 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there is at least one good child per house.

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc. That means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, at tops 25-30 miles per hour.

The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming each child gets nothing more then a medium sized LEGO set (2 lbs), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight.

On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting the "flying reindeer" can pull TEN TIMES that normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even ninewe need 214,200 reindeer. This increased the payloadnot even counting the weight of the sleigh--to 353,430 tons. Again for comparison, this is four times the weight of the HMS Queen Elizabeth.

353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per second, each. In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and creating a deafening sonic boom in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa meanwhile, will be subject to centrifugal forces of 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 lb. Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by a 4,315,015 pound force.

In conclusion, if Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas eve ...

he's now dead !