It's the beginning of flu season and as I kid, I would conveniently get sick with anything but the flu right around my birthday. Teaching public school and riding public transportation has made my immune system nearly indestructible but I still find myself with an occasional sniffle that is just annoying enough to make you look like Rudolph but not serious enough to actually treat it any way.
December is also when winter really starts to settle in. There are no flukey warm days and the hope of an Indian summer withered away with those last few leaves left hanging on the trees. In Rochester and even Baltimore to a lesser extent, it meant cold temperatures and snow, but only on days when you were in a hurry or had something important planned. "Your students are already a week behind in the curriculum because of state mandated diagnostic testing? Well, here's a blizzard that we're grossly underprepared for despite the fact that it happens every year and it's going to keep you out of school for 4 days! Don't worry. We'll just reschedule the lost days in June after final exam week. I'm sure attendance will be great and you'll really get a lot out of that instructional time!"
And then there's Christmas. I am the opposite of The Grinch and Scrooge in that as I participate in more Christmases, I seem to like it less and less. I hate the aggressive consumerism that completely overshadows the fun family stuff. People are pushy and rude and always in a hurry. Not exactly the Christmas spirit. There is always the ridiculous battle, steeped in religious intolerance, about the phrase "Happy Holidays." Someone's mad if you say it, someone else is mad if you don't. Why can't we just be glad that we're wishing well to our fellow man and leave it at that? I love giving presents, but I hate the intense amount of pressure that I feel to pick just the right gifts, especially now that I have married into such a good gift giving family. How can I compete with handcrafted silver jewelry that you've been working on for months?? And speaking of families, it is so hard sharing holidays, especially when you've already crossed an ocean to be there and now you have to pack up your stuff and drive across two states to be somewhere else. Jason's family is really into Christmas so we always spend it there but that means that I have to miss my family's get-together every year. It sucks. Just because we don't do Christmas to the extreme doesn't mean we don't love seeing each other. Also, Christmas music blaring on the radio 24/7 makes me want to rip my ears off. Bah humbug indeed.
BUT! This December was pretty awesome. Here's why.
It was the 3rd annual Bordeaux Tasting event and I am proud to say that I have been to every single one. Unlimited tastings of hundreds of wines from all over Bordeaux and the world, plus spirits and champagnes, all day long for 19€? Yes. Yes, I will.
Coincidentally, I have lots of friends that were also born in December so we had a big fat joint birthday party at our place. A bunch of my friends from work came and there were snacks, games, drinks and dancing until the wee hours of the morning. Everything was perfect until my rum and Cokes turned into rum and rums and I was perhaps a bit more intoxicated than I wanted to be. Oops! The next day was... difficult. DIRTY 30!!!!
December is also really beautiful in Bordeaux. You don't see a lot of lights on individual houses but the city light displays are pretty epic.
Seeing as I had just been in the US for Thanksgiving, I made it very clear to Jason that I was not planning to go back home for Christmas. He was thinking about it pretty hard and it didn't help that Jay was laying on the "I don't know how many Christmases I have left" guilt pretty thick, but my "You're going to leave me alone on my 30th birthday?" guilt won out. Hooray for manipulating people into spending time with you! That's what the holidays are really all about.
We cooked an epic Christmas feast and opened gifts with the Bayers via FaceTime, which worked out well for everyone involved. I was feeling inspired this year and I got lots of great gifts for Jason and even some that didn't suck for the Bayers. My family doesn't really do presents so much (which is why I have such limited gift-giving skills) but I got Josh, Stefanie and my parents this Amerks hockey gift pack with some tickets and little winter hats. Everyone was happy!
There was some thing really nice about having the day to ourselves this year. Family time is wonderful, but going home for the holidays is not. Traveling around Christmas is THE WORST, not only because it is prohibitively expensive but mostly because people just aren't very nice. Everyone needs to be where they're going NOW and the TSA does not have time for smiling or speaking in normal tones. Everyone has a special situation that no one could possibly understand, despite the fact that people have been traveling on Christmas literally since Christmas was even invented. We swapped massive crowds for mac 'n' cheese and pricey flights for pumpkin pies. Merry Christmas to us.
I know I said I don't like traveling around the holidays but I was willing to deal a 90-minute direct flight on the 26th because it meant on got to spend my 30th birthday in Amsterdam. Bitch. We were very well behaved: No drugs or prostitutes or other things that Amsterdam is known for. But we did have some great food and plenty of tasty beers. Canals, lots of bikes and even a windmill!
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