2018年12月7日金曜日 - 
William M - Christmas with my Family
Christmas has always been an important
time of year for me. Since a young age, my family has ingrained in me a
strong need to visit relatives – most of which I rarely see outside of
Christmas gatherings. I groaned and complained as a
kid – preferring to stay at home and be lazy – but as I grew older and spent
more and more of my time working and stressing about daily life, the chance to set
all of that aside and focus on the lives and families of my
relatives became something I relished more and
more.
The
longest tradition we have is visiting my Aunt Val's house for a big family
dinner on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Seeing my cousins and aunts and
uncles – and their respective in-laws – is
always nice. Seeing my young cousins so full of enthusiasm and excitement, and catching
up with
my older relatives, puts me at ease and gives me a warm sense of
familiarity. And of course the food
always makes my stomach growl when I think of it:
juicy steaks, turkey with apple jelly, garlic mashed potatoes. But of course,
the pièce de résistance has to be sausage rolls with spicy mustard!
Another
tradition I look forward to is the much smaller but no-less delicious lunchtime
family meal at my mother's house on Christmas Day. (My parents were divorced
when I was young, which meant I celebrated Christmas twice, once with each
parent's side!) She always cooks a very tender, sweet ham with pineapple-style
gravy, along with turkey and mashed potatoes. Plenty of vegetables, but I never bothered
with those!
One
more tradition I remember fondly, even if we don't do
it anymore, is driving around with my father and step-mother looking at
Christmas lights on the night of Christmas Eve. We often went after some family
dinner or gathering, I remember always being stuffed full of food, drowsy, and
toasty warm with the car heater blowing (while it was usually minus 10 to minus
20 degrees Celsius outside!), staring out the window at the colourful slideshow
of house after house lit up in Christmas-y displays, both humble and
grand. There would always be one or two houses we made a point to drive by and
see, as they went absolutely crazy with their yearly Christmas displays. Long
front yards, filled with lit-up displays of Santa, reindeer, Christmas trees,
snowmen, and the like, would be bright enough to form a small artificial sun!
It's
these memories that make me think about Christmas as the best time of year, and
why I feel it's so important to make time to see my family, even if I'm here in
Japan, on the other side of the planet, thirty to forty hours of travel time
away. Christmas in Japan is quite nice, but without family, it's just a cold
month with some KFC!
ingrained：しっかり植え付ける
groaned：ぶーぶー文句を言う
set all of that aside：全部横に置いておいて
relished：楽しむ
respective in-laws：各々の義父母
growl：ぐるぐる言う
along with：～といっしょに
fondly：懐かしく
drowsy：うとうとして
humble：質素な
artificial：人工の