The collective noun for Christmas decorations isn’t ‘sh*t’

Apparently I am not allowed to use ‘sh*t’ as the collective noun for Christmas decorations etc, seemingly it’s not festive to be so negative.

I am renowned in my family for being The Grinch when it comes to Christmas. There is many a photo of me in a shop where the husband is looking well excited about all of the decorations and me, well, less so….

The Christmas shop in Bloomingdales in New York
The Christmas shop in Bloomingdales in New York

To be honest, until I met the husband, I wasn’t Christmas-phobic – but he is soooooo Christmas obsessed, I feel that I need to off set this somehow.

A couple of years ago there was a serious injury in the erection of the Christmas decorations in the Price household.  The husband managed, whilst cutting a tunnel through a mountainside for the Christmas village, to sever a vein in his arm that required stitches (3 times, because it kept bursting underneath the stitches – grim!)

Injured arm

and so that year they were literally ‘bloody Christmas decorations’.

This year, when I popped back from the office on Friday, I found that reinforcements had been called in – there were 3 company vans on the drive having delivered 2 carpenters, 2 painters and a contract supervisor to assist with Christmas – and some sort of sleigh with reindeer on the patio outside:

Christmas vans Christmas sleigh

I then went out for the evening with some of the local Mums – and when I staggered in at 1.30am it appeared that someone had vomited Christmas all over the house all evening……….

photo 5 photo 4 photo 3 photo 4 photo 1

And the Christmas village isn’t even finished yet!  Here’s am amazing photo of it last year taken by my talented photographer friend Bee.

Christmas village

Apparently there are some electrical works that need completing before this year’s is ready to be viewed (my sister was overheard yesterday complaining that the one in her local garden centre is nowhere near up to our standards!!)

So today – we spiced up the festive cheer with a trip to the German market in the centre of Birmingham.  Admittedly some of it remains traditionally German – but the ‘do you want 4 doughnuts for a fiver, bab?’ is pretty Brummie!!  The gluhwein was ridiculously pricey (given what you can buy a bottle for from Aldi / Lidl / your sister’s local shop in Munich) – and this year we DIDN’T KEEP THE MUGS (there are only so many small rubbish mugs one family can house!)  But the kids had fun – mostly due to the carousel and expensive Olaf and Hello Kitty balloons that almost strangled half of New Street on the walk back to the car.

Christmas carousel

 

So when I was given this present by my sister via my parents this afternoon – it pretty much summed up the next month for me:

12 days of Christmas

 

Although I did watch the Strictly results show with Rudolph tonight………

Reindeer

 

 

I’m re-posting this to link in with The Sticky Fingers Blog for The Photo Gallery week 212 where the theme is Christmas – as this is our Christmas!!! Do pop across and see what Christmas is like for other bloggers………….

Sticky Fingers Photo Gallery