#39 - Christmas Day and Stress, Old Videos - 25/12/2025
Oh ho ho ho - or something to that effect. Christmas Day 2025, here we are. To be honest, i'm not sure exactly how to go about the day, nowadays. When I was a kid, I recall it was a big celebration: i'd wake up, come downstairs, everyone would be there and there'd be the sound of presents opening and wrapping paper scuttling across the musty old carpet, joined by the flecks of pine that had scattered to the floor. I'd be there, opening up my gifts, thankful of what I got and wishing a merry christmas to all here and everywhere. Then i'd either get a special hot chocolate, or i'd scuttle back to my room to await christmas dinner which usually tended to be turkey and lamb. And then, the day would ebb out. I don't really remember too many of those christmasses anymore, just the vague notions of what they were more than anything else. The price of having a decent memory is forgetting your earliest ones, like a folder constantly having its contents saved over every single second. Reminds me of the ship of theseus, actually, the whole idea of starting off as one thing and ending up becoming something else. To what extent I really miss or remember what i DO recall is unknown to me, though - as a kid, I saw a black and white view of a multi-toned world (not in the literal sense of colour, just how blunt and forward the world really was). Nowadays I see those multi-tones.
So how has christmas been for me?
...Im not really sure how to define it. I mean, I can talk about it, for sure. The day starts off fairly normal, fairly quiet too actually. I wake up from being up until 5am, due to the fact that my body is basically in sleep mode and that I feel content in my bed. For context, I drank too much vodka and irn bru the night before and ended up with an acidic throat when a quarter of that ended up hurled up in the bathroom sink, but, I was still plenty pissed off of my head (slang for being drunk for anyone who doesnt come from UK, hah), so my body felt like a weight in water. Hell, kept saying to close buddies that I felt like i'd just sink into the bed and come out the other side, whatever that means anyway. Hey, even I don't know myself when im drunk, at least, not to that level - i'd been more careful in the past but apparently I drank too much on the day, still feeling the effects of sluggishness now. Anyway, back to the topic: i'm sluggish, waking up, having had five hours of sleep total, and the little gifts I get are cute little knick knacks im happy with - i'm not really someone who gets picky over gifts, hell, some socks and a cup of tea is enough for me. Nevertheless, the sentiment of those gifts is massively appreciated and I express that clear-cut, and I get the same sort of response back with the small gifts I give too. All's well there, and to be honest I spent the majority of the morning just catching up with whatever RebelTaxi had put out. But there's a creeping, underlying tension and unfortunately my worries are confirmed outright when of course there's bickering on what's supposed to be a happy, calm day. To make matters worse, an hour or so after that, the smoke alarm activates because the Oven here is a piece of crap and a rogue drop of fat must have ignited the grease in the thing, so the living space becomes a smog machine and sets the alarms off which last for about two to three hours, giving me and everyone else inside a complete and utter headache. Eventually, the alarms go off, but the lingering tension from before keeps cropping up and even as I type this, I can still feel it. Sucks, to be honest - even on a day like this, people can't control themselves enough to just let the day be nice. Unfortunately it was like this the year before on the same day too, albeit much worse due to the fact that people just decided to give up on trying to make the day any good. But I digress. The day in it's second half has been primarily tense, and it sucks really, because the nice parts of the day have been really nice. This is something that I hope to never have if I have a place of my very own, this need for people to just argue because something inside spurs them on to be miserable towards the other. Honestly i've been thinking on what i'd want from a place of my own, so much more lately and while I know that I have a long way to go when it comes to that point, I still desire and want it. It just kind of annoys me I guess because I'd like to just have a day where I don't think on these grandiose plans I want to attend to when I'm capable of registering them, I just want some peace and quiet for a day like this.
But it also quite frankly reminds me specifically of the kind of ires I have when it comes to this season. I don't think i've mentioned this in specific when it comes to previous posts but I honest to god detest the over-commercialisation of christmas nowadays. What do I mean by that? I mean the fact that the season's about having giant banquets and big gifts and getting so many things for other people and celebrating the holiday cheer with pumping massive amounts of cash into random shit. It just feels wrong. I have a grinch-themed hoodie and I won't lie, it feels really comfortable, but I can never shake the feeling of how off it feels to make merch and limited time mcdonalds meals of the grinch and all of these other things, capitalising on this idea that money MUST be spent this year, when the whole point of the grinch was literally about how the spirit of christmas and the reason why it matters is more than materialistic gifts; it's about spending time with your loved ones, appreciating what you have, appreciating all that has been, being kind to one another. And what does that get watered down to by the corporate giants around this time of the year? "LIMITED TIME GRINCH MEAL ONLY AT MCDONALDS, GRINCH HOODIES ON SALES SO YOU HAVE THE WHO-VILLE FIT, YADA YADA YADA!". Like...does it not bother anyone else? Am I too serious? AM I missing the point? I dont know, like, I was a kid once and I was also a tad materialistic, not going to deny that. But I was a kid, a dumb little child, who just wanted to have a nice holiday. And all the over-commercialisation existed back then too, but, I didnt have the mental capacity to think deeply on this stuff until my...I wanna say being 14 to be honest, which is when I began to feel like maybe companies and corporations go a tad too far over this whole shebang. I think to be honest, I was sort of primed to think this way with some of the stuff that I watched as a kid, which came with the added bonus of being sincere and to heart about things. One of my favourite all time christmas movies of sorts is a short little flick called Christopher's Christmas Mission. It's a movie, animated one, about a postal worker who goes on a robin hood-esque mission of his own at the christmas period and gives gifts to the poor and the destitute, knowing that they'd value them more than how fickle his extended family and the high class elites treat those kind of gifts. It has a really blues-y, really somber tone to it because it feels real - there's a lot of soft, quaint commentary throughout the whole thing, showing the likes of orphans, the homeless, people who cant read or write but when Christopher enacts his personal mission, he's able to make their christmas just a little bit happier. And when he's found out and absolutely lambasted by his grumpy old father, his uncle or so actually...doesnt punish him, but commends him for his deed and trying to do something kind for the people who are completely overlooked at this whole holiday. And his family, originally shocked and appalled by what he's done, see the error of their thinking and commend him for genuinely just being a kind of human being. Ever since I saw it as a young kid on what must have been some big compliation VHS tape of relatively obscure christmas movies for children, it's stuck with me. And I suppose i've always been a bit presient, aware, of this kind of thing, of the real humanity behind these things. I unfortunately can't help every living soul out there but I absolutely wish the best for them given the terrible weather conditions and how hard it can be at this time of year - it puts things into perspective, but I wouldn't go out on a limb and say that my problems suddenly dont exist because of that. Actually, the two can be mutually exclusive. Problems in people's lives arent things to box into categories, they can all mean something to the individual people who have them. But this is getting offtopic - the point is, I believe that the importance of christmas should be about treasuring what you have and just being kind to people, of being kind to those who need it and just being a decent human being to others in the process. It can be a day where sure, gifts are exchanged, but it shouldnt be the entire process, it should be a third of the whole shtick. Even the people I live with just...tend to miss the point about christmas I feel, though I appreciate their ideas for what a christmas can be because hey, aside from the obvious anxiety inducing stress, it's not been...bad. I suppose bringing up Christopher's Christmas Mission hits a deep note with me given that I was technically homeless at one point, and the fact that I've worked in areas where i've had to see the state of the homeless and what they endure. It's a topic that hits too close to home and it reminds me, in all my trite errors and the frustration I feel at the world for the hand of cards that have been thrown at me this year and the past few, that being kind above all else is really important. Hell, in the shit i've endured this year, some of my closest friends and family have supported me in ways that I could have never fathomed, ways that I could have never seen coming, making me legitimately ask myself "Im...really that important to people?", on several occasions. To know someone cares about you enough that they'd want to help you and to know that people genuinely care about you deeply means so much, and I dont take that for granted. I value it, hold onto that feeling and keep it tight and safe in a space the rest of the world won't get it's greedy hands on it. Some things are deserving of protection. Love is a strong emotion and one of which I want to cherish till the end of time.
I've made my point fairly clear, about the semantics of the season but I'd be remissed to say that I don't miss specific aspects of it. The first is the fact that it barely snows here anymore. What do I mean, exactly? Well, about as frank as I said it to be blunt with you, it virtually doesnt snow in December anymore and instead it's SOMETIMES reserved for January or February, very rarely March. This is a very semantic point, but, I recall years of my childhood in which December actually snowed and when it did, it added to the magic of the season. It especially added to the magic of the whole season when it came to events in primary school like the yearly nativity story, the whole story of how jesus was born and the ensuing gospel of songs we'd sing on the big special night just a week before christmas day itself. I'll talk about these in a moment, as my point WAS the snow; it just doesnt snow anymore, and it's sad. I remember the kind of buzz in the air and how magical it felt to see the snow fall, to see the layers grow in clumps of wet, icy snow that people would pick up and lob at each other on the way to the school. I loved the way my small boots would grip against whatever remnant of the pavements survived the weather, and the slippy feeling of my fake leather shoes trying to desperately not make me slide around on the dangerous black ice. The way my nose would redden against the freezing cold air and the almost soft, silk tones of the overcast sky reflecting pure white crystal snowfall. That particular way the snow clumps sticking to my baggy, oversized coat would melt away and drip down to the concrete, that beautiful crunch sound of the cold snow beneath my fake leather shoes and how snow would somehow find it's way into my socks. Sure, I hated it back then but I miss it now, and I find myself just missing a lot of those winter aspects. It snowed heavy back in November of 2024, around...I want to say the 18th or 20th, but, it hasnt this year. Instead, we've had nothing but torrential downpour - listen, I love the rain, but not every single day. Eventually something has got to give.
I mentioned it just briefly in that diatribe about the snow but, I miss the December events too, the ones from when I was a kid in primary school. See, every year, we'd have a christmas play and it would usually just be some telling of the nativity/jesus was born story; I wasn't actually a christian, but the school apparently was so regardless of whatever I felt about religion as a kid that was mainly obsessed with power rangers and timesplitters 2, I was there to see it. But I remember the way that we'd dress up, tinsel on our heads or costumes, the stage fully built up for this occasion, the dim lighting that gave everything a sepia hue like we were made for the memories these sorts of moments would end up becoming. And I remember the gospel singing, the songs in general - the sound in my memories is so faint, but I deeply remember those songs, especially THIS one. Albeit, it didnt sound exactly like this and it didnt sound like a bloody super mario sunshine level hahaha, but...it's nostalgic. It always made me feel like perhaps, I was just one person within a sea of so many others, millions, that came from something utterly astonishing. To be a part of some kind of comfortable collective, to have a world view that protected me as much as the world could teach me. I suppose that's how I've interpreted how I must have felt from back then, but I loved these songs and a part of me still does. I think ill discuss my thoughts on where i've come at with the whole religion thing when I write up a little year's end retrospective in a few days time (not on the actual day because let's be frank, I write like I'm creating a bloody safety manual and I don't trust myself to actually have the energy on a day where I'm most likely going to be drinking alcohol). In general, I'll just be writing up a lot of thoughts in that blogpost to come. It's been a long year, I need to comparmentalise it in some form. But back to the points. The final thing I generally miss is just...the decorativeness of it all. This year wasnt really that decorated much when it came to christmas deco. I guess it's a really silly thing in comparison to the other ones I mentioned, but seeing a lot of things around the living quarters just decorated in really beautiful tinsel and fairy lights and the like is just nice. So, you can imagine how dour it feels to see barely any of that. I guess that's all I can say there.
Before the stressors of today, I was actually in quite the nostalgic mood. I dont know specifically what it was, but, I ended up watching a few old SFM/GMOD videos. Specifically, TF2 Air 1 and 2, Spy Hates Bananas, a little bit of Dat Intelligence. Its funny, never played TF2, but, these videos are the basis of a lot of my sense of humor. Its interesting, despite how much I myself have changed, my humor has remained consistent and I feel like I have deeper appreciation for how the people behind these things made them. I dont know why I decided to watch them on this specific day, but, perhaps I just wanted to feel like I was in a comfortable spot - to reflect and think fondly back on memories. I want to have more opportunities like these. I'll discuss these more in-depth someday, probably when I'm in better straits.
I hope that the last days of this year are peaceful. I hope that 2026 also leaves me be and lets me get on with my intended plans as well. I'm not really in the mood for uncomfortable surprises anymore.
Trust me, they get old after the first time they happen.