This year I decided to make Heston Blumenthal’s incredibly complicated turkey recipe. We have an organic, cashmere cuddled platinum dressed turkey which is whispered kind words to build a high self-esteem in the freezer that Alastair bought two years ago on Christmas Eve at our local shop. Said turkey is over 10kg in weight and cost over £80. Or it should have done, only Alastair went an hour before closing time on Christmas Eve, and as both Christmas and Boxing Day are holidays and the shop knew they couldn’t shift the turkeys, they reduced them to £5 each.

Alastair bought two of them.

I despair he’ll do it again, as although it’s brilliant value, it’s lovely to have a shelf back in our freezer again.

I was reviewing the recipe (which is said to make the most amazing, juicy turkey ever although it takes over 12 hours to get it ready) and I thought: I don’t work this hard at anything! Not work, not alphabetizing my books, not even at getting my husband off. Does this mean my priorities extend to frozen poultry but not beyond?

We’ve put some decorations up.

Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.

I put out our beloved Christmas star, which we bought in Amsterdam years ago, and the angel that my grandma gave me a very long time ago and which a friend kindly restored for me when her wing broke.

(In the window is a digital thermometer reading +1, ergo why the snow is melting now. Also in the window are the collapsed molehills and the chocolate-laxative laced garden. Keeping my fingers crossed…)

The advent calendars are nearly done. The twins have Winnie the Pooh ones that dispense chocolates, as does Alastair’s Lindt advent calendar at his desk. For the non-chocolate lover (me) there’s the world’s coolest advent calendar from here.

The tree is decorated and the family gifts (to the twins, the older kids, and the extended family) are out under the tree.

And upstairs in the guest room, hidden, is a giant Santa bag that my dad and stepmum brought us a few years ago.

Inside that bag are two presents – one for Nick, one for Nora. The family gives each other gifts. Santa brings the specific things that two little people beg Santa for, their eyes bright and shiny and hopeful with that kind of hope that if you could bottle, then you could get through anything. Inside that Santa bag is a dolly, bottle, and pajama set for her and a large train set for him. Santa will bring that bag down on Christmas Eve, and when the twins get up in the morning they will find that Santa will do absolutely anything to keep that hope alive in their eyes.

What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store.

We are ready for Santa.

(Whiskey and a mince pie. We don’t mess around with milk and cookies around here with Santa, nosiree.)

I don’t know that I have my Christmas spirit back, per se. It’s been a tough end of year. A family situation that I thought was, turns out wasn’t. And I don’t know how to undo what has been done – what I have done and what has been done to me. I struggled with it, but maybe the real definition of family is that dynamic roil that you learn over time. Family is not just blood, nor does it have to be defined as only so. A change has come, and the only thing to do is move on with it and learn from it.

I am finally out of my casts and all my stitches are gone. I walk like an elderly person, but I am walking. I have an appointment with the specialist in January and from there I get to work out how to live the rest of my life. It won’t be in a bubble, that’s for sure, but it will have to be lived a lot more carefully than it has been.

London Heathrow HADN’T stopped Christmas from coming! IT CAME! Somehow or other, it came just the same!

We had the joy and privilege of my stepmum making it here for two days.

Two little people love her unreservedly. When she picked them up at nursery and they threw themselves at her, shrieking and laughing, she cried.

And today after three days, four cancelled and re-scheduled flights, hours on the phone to airline booking companies, and relentless weather and flight watching, two special people arrived at Heathrow, where we picked them up amongst huge hugs.

What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.

I am not religious.

I am, however, sentimental.

I have no right to complain – although my health took a decline this year, I had good things happen, too. I got married. The twins are happy, bouncy, bubbly and bright. My folks are great. We’ve got our jobs and our home and two working cars. We haven’t been trapped in a mine, been in a volcanic eruption, or been in a war. In short, I need to get some fucking perspective and stop being introspective and gloomy.

This time of year almost every major religion has a holiday. Christmas, Hannukah, Ashura, Bodhi Day, Solstice Night, whatever you may lean to there is probably something for you. For me, I lean to the idea of a big man in a red suit that keeps hope alive. I lean to family – adopted, married, loved, difficult, and everything in between. Christmas spirit doesn’t come in a can. It can’t be forced, sought, or purchased. It comes in many flavors. I may or may not have gotten my Christmas mojo back, but I have knocked myself on the head and gotten the real spirit of the holiday back – my family.

Merry Christmas from me and two little shepherds that I know, too.

-S.