Falling Needles and Family Fest Day.

 Falling Needles and Family Fest Day.

Goodness me! What a mess! It is a scene of utter chaos and festive detritus. Your home looks like a veritable rubbish tip. Christmas has come and gone, some of your family are still sitting or lying on your sofa, the kids are still running around your golden palace and the living room looks unrecognisable. It feels as though you've allowed several marauding armies to wreck the furniture, empty your fridge of every conceivable tin of food, the entire contents of every box of chocolates and sweets before depositing yet more wrapping paper around the mantelpiece and the TV. The telly of course is hiding away in the corner feeling sorry for itself. 

Today, as you may well have guessed by now, is Falling Needles and Family Fest Day. There can be no more appropriate description. It is one enormous fall out from Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the now intervening days before the New Year. So you've cleaned the kitchen, put the dishwasher on for the 85th time and that's just before breakfast time. The washing machine has been spinning around frenetically as if it's forgotten what day it is. It is the morning after the nights before. Christmas has well and truly gone.

Today is all about repercussions, reverberations, questions, inquiries, the almost stunned aftermath of Christmas 2025. This is the interim period when Christmas has passed into history for another year and you're wondering why you invited so many nieces, cousins, aunties and friends around for the yearly gastronomic bash, where huge towers of turkey, roast potatoes and Brussel sprouts have been excitedly eating and don't forget the Christmas pudding while never forgetting that lovely slice of cake or perhaps a goose or duck if you're in the mood. 

Some simply dread the whole concept of Christmas because it's far too much like hard work and all you want to do is slouch around the house and do nothing at all because that suits you down to the ground. It's all that preparation for the big day, the seating arrangements and the counting of the Christmas crackers next to the crockery and cutlery. It's all very well making the effort to get all of this stuff ready for a celebration. But do they have to leave your humble abode in a state of complete disarray?

So it is that we call today the Falling Needles and Family Fest Day. Need you say any more. That Christmas Day tree certainly looks as if it's consumed far too much booze because it's wobbling and staggering around piteously and if you listen closely, it's slurring its words. There is a drunken sore head that is spreading around the room quite metaphorically of course.  The tree has been gripped with a chronic bout of hiccups, the tinsel and glitter almost pleading for a return for normality. But you're helpless. This could take ages to mop up and sweep up so it's time to get the vacuum cleaner out and then the broom again. 

Now the extended family is just exhausted, fast asleep for the third time in three days, sliding hilariously off the settee and then sheepishly flicking away a torn party hat before abandoning yourself to another bout of snoring, sniffling, coughing and general slovenliness. How on earth did we allow this to happen? Was this really necessary and couldn't we have chucked everybody out ruthlessly on Boxing Day? The fact is Christmas is officially over but the remnants are still here, staring at you accusingly, grinning at you relentlessly and then refusing to give you a hand with the dirty dishes. 

But there is something of  a wonderful relief and a sense of gratification about Christmas. Of course, you've all had a great time over the festive period and there's much to be said for the family just being there for you. But the carpet looks as if it need to be steam cleaned a thousand times, there's gravy dripping from the radio and the TV and Radio Times are crying out for a thorough recycling. There are a thousand coffee stains on yesterday's paper, there are the kids toys and games scattered higgledy piggledly all over your home and all you want to do is scream in desperation. Stop this madness but didn't we enjoy ourselves?

On the coffee table Christmas has reasserted itself and it's not going anywhere soon. The angel from the Christmas table has been officially snapped off and there are a thousand packets of figs and dates which look as though they haven't been touched since last Christmas. So you climb over slumbering bodies and pick your way through a minefield of sweet and crisp packets carefully and then sigh with exhaustion. 

Essentially though grandma and grandpa have had a jolly good Christmas although the whisky and sherry bottles are now perhaps a shameful reminder of excess. Grandma and grandpa always exercised moderation and restraint but then again it was Christmas. We're all entitled to let off steam and indulge ourselves so go on and have some fun. The cousins are wearing yet another of their festive red pullovers emblazoned with Santa Claus, sleighs and reindeers. If Christmas had been banned for ever, you'd probably have a riot on your hands.

Now its time for another karaoke session. You can't beat a good, old fashioned sing song by the piano, a Knees Up Mother Brown. Dad just wants to go out and renew acquaintance with his car in the garage. Mum just wants everybody to go home and the kids are creating merry havoc. But hey, it really has been good to see the family even though you support the worst football team in the country and there's no sympathy whatsoever. We keep vowing to keep to our New Years resolutions because we always do before realising the futility of this exercise. 

And we now sit in the corner of the dining room, munching soggy cheese sandwiches because we just feel obliged to do so. The roast chestnuts, salty peanuts, After Eight mints and those final, gristly turkey and onion sarnies are just slowly decaying and disintegrating into a kind of mush, ready for the bin. But you're not going to stop now. You're determined to watch as many Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney films as you possibly can, binge watching the kind of programmes you'd never see on the terrestrial channels. We'll all slump back into our armchairs, shaking off yet more baubles, tinsel, struggling to make head or tail of the last week or two. There can be no rationalising of what has just taken place. But it has.

So that's it for another Santa Claus revelry. All of those giddy expectations of Christmas have now been left in the dusty archives of time, the sheer silliness of it all, at times, has just been exhilarating, the festive frivolity has been a blast, the brief extravagance of it all has been worth it, and finally the endless noshing, piling on the pounds and stones around your waistline and not giving a damn my dear. You are now fit to burst, stomach heaving with embarrassing cholesterol and yet that was the finest and most emotional family reunion. Now here's the plan. Why don't we do the same thing at exactly the same time next year. It's an excellent idea and of course we look forward to it. Happy, Healthy and Peaceful New Year to everybody. Have a good one folks.