So, this is Christmas...

The question is: what is your favourite Christmas 'pop' tune?  They're unavoidable, and this year don't seem to have been as annoying as in previous years.  John & Yoko's 'Happy Christmas, War is Over' always makes me stop and think.  What is so depressing is that it's not, and there's no straightforward answer to any of it....  doom and gloom then?

Well, I try to think not.

I hear hope in Greg Mortensen's 'Three Cups of Tea' and the follow up 'Stones into Schools', which I've nearly finished reading. I've really enjoyed this unusual and inspirational American man's account of building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Why is he doing it?  long story, but essentially so that women are educated and eventually through the education of women the fanaticism of the Taliban will (hopefully, Inshallah) be a thing of the past.  It's positively uplifting, and reads like a boys own adventure story - whatever the American version of that may be.  I recommend them to you!

I like Chris Rea's 'Driving Home for Christmas', Paul McCartney's number, can't think of the particular title at the moment, Mariah Carey's 'All I want for Christmas', and quite a few other seasonal songs all by artists whom I wouldn't normally give the time of day to.  Yes, I'm going soft (in my dotage).

But how to avoid the commercial pressure to consume, as in buy buy buy, and eat eat eat at this time of year?  Everyone seems to be trying very hard to have a good time, because that's what we're supposed to do.  And you can't spoil it for the kids, can you?  No, I'm becoming more cynical in my maturing years.  If the 'average' amount of money that people (adults?) spend on their children's presents is £150-£200 then the whole thing seems to me to obscenely out of proportion.  We spent £50 each child, £75 tops.  It seems to me that setting a child's expectations that high, so young, is storing a lot of trouble for the future, and in these bleak economic times surely the spending should be cut back.  Everything in moderation... in balance, as in nature.

On a lighter note, I got an early Christmas present from Oxfordshire County Council.  The interview I went to on 21st December for Library Services Assistant, part-time, was a success, and I've been offered the job.  :) Pending references etc I'm starting on 10th January.  So the new year will start brighter than the old one finished, and good riddance to it too!

Snowy Owl - Beale Park Oct 2011.

It's late, time for bed.  Happy blogging Christmas to one and all.  Keep it sweet, Kat