Pleasant. The wife gave my a liter of the new (at least for here) Johnnie Walker Double Black Label. I gave her some stuff from the Body Shop. (We agreed to keep it light, because we’ll be spending enough money in Japan in a few months.) Will head upcountry to visit friends this weekend. And I’m not sure, but I think it may have finally dipped below 90 degrees on Christmas Day.
Very quiet Christmas here. I’m 37 weeks pregnant with our first baby, so we didn’t travel to visit family like usual. Since we always travel, we don’t have a tree or decorations and really didn’t want to spend money on it this year. We didn’t exchange gifts, but we did buy each other baby furniture which should get delivered tomorrow. Went out with friends to a lovely restaurant for Christmas dinner, then couch, movies and eggnog for the rest of the night. I keep reminding myself to enjoy this Christmas quiet - my Christmases will never be the same!
Mine was pretty depressing for my dad and sister and I, since my mom left last month. But I think we made the most of it.
Imagine their relief… 
One of the worst days of my life.
No joke.
{{{{{Bosda}}}}}
^ This.
♫ “It’s the most horrible time of the year” ♫
Same as it has been for years - dinner with the in-laws and my wife’s sister and her family - lots of sitting there watching the TV while my in-laws did all the cooking and clean-up and refusing to let anyone alleviate their boredom by helping. Lot’s of strained small-talk and long, awkward silences. I can think of plenty of places that I’d rather be, but there is never an escape. It is the time of year with several day’s company holiday, but we can never go anywhere or enjoy a dinner out as we always have to “be with family”. Meh.
For this reason, I usually try to avoid dealing with the holidays as much as possible and look forward more to their being over.
Christmas Eve morning snowboarding with my kids was a blast, tho. Best morning I have had in a long time - I need more of those!
Bosda, again, I am sorry. I lost my father 17 years ago and still miss him. It’s really tough.
Clearly, after reading your thread, you and your brother did right by your dad. ((hug))
My Christmas was meh. Had Christmas breakfast with some friends. Almost all of my family is in Europe, so I spent some time emailing and calling and oohing and ahhing over Christmas photos of my nieces and nephews.
Plans to do restaurant dinner and a movie with a good friend fell through because she has the flu This would have been our fifth year of dinner-and-movie on Christmas, but she said she felt too lousy to even get out of bed. 
Visited with a neighbor for a while and watched the movie Bridesmaids with him, turned down last-minute “pity invite” to accompany him to his sister’s house for Christmas dinner.
Took dogs for walk before dark, then went home and treated myself to a big thick ribeye steak (rare) with sauteed brussels sprouts on the side and panettone dripping with real butter for dessert. 
I had to work all evening.
But I had lunch with my folks before that and they made a delicious Brasato al Barolo ( sort of an Italian boeuf bourguignon ), which was pretty nice. And I did the family rounds Sunday evening and Monday afternoon/evening, so it mostly worked out pretty well.
You’re right, dammit. A new year is coming, the door is welcome to hit 2012 in the ass as hard as it can on its way out, and I’m going to go have some cake.
Now that I’m in a better mood, I can tell you the good things about Christmas. Our tree looked fantastic and the cats didn’t even try to climb it this year. We spent Christmas Eve watching Duck Tales episodes on DVD and enjoying hot chocolate and a crackling fire. My husband made me a mix CD of a bunch of “our” songs, played and sung and mixed entirely by him, and it’s possibly the sweetest gift I’ve ever gotten. I made tourtiere, turkey gravy, and chocolate cake, and they all turned out great. It snowed just enough to cover the grass, but not enough to make driving risky. My nephew (18 months) kept picking up people’s presents and handing them to someone else, and he’s learned to say my name. Ok, so he calls me “Dzee” but still, it means me and that’s wonderful. And finally, in a pat-myself-on-the-back moment, I challenged myself to do a blog advent calendar with one story a day relating to my collection of Christmas ornaments, and I did it without skipping a single day. I’m going to call Christmas a success and then kiss this year goodbye.
This is the first year my wife and I have had separate houses, so it was good from the standpoint that I did not put up one single Christmas decoration. Other than that it was pretty boring. I don’t like holidays anyway. I’m happy to get back to the normal routine. Yay! I can go back to work now!
Fantastic. I have a great wife and kids and wonderful in-laws, and enjoy this time of year hugely. I took the whole week off and we’ll spend most of the time playing cards and board games, and watching movies.
Well, it was fine, until one of my dearest friends learned that her old boyfriend–the one who was THE ONE once, the one whom time can never diminish, the one who remained single into his 40’s in honor of her memory and out of pure consideration for her feelings…got married. We are in mourning. We are in crisis. We are certain she is a total bitch.
So if nobody is taking Curiosity’s brownie…
Not great. As usual, we had to go to my husband’s parents’ house for Christmas Eve, and his mother is a drama queen who made us all recite a Buddhist prayer before dinner, and his dad was in a crappy mood, and the younger niece was as usual, a whiny pain in the ass. I get that she’s excited that it’s Christmas and there aren’t any other kids to play with, but she’s spoiled rotten and totally indulged, and somebody has to tell her to STFU.
Parents said they were going out of town on Christmas Day to visit other relatives, so we had suggested that my husband’s brother and perhaps older niece and her boyfriend come over and play some games, and we could make pizza or go out for Chinese food, as younger PITA niece would be with her other grandparents. But parents decided not to go out of town, and brother said he would be hanging out with his on-again girlfriend. That left us with really nothing to do. My husband was actually crying with frustration as we were driving home Monday night. His parents were just intolerable and the girl needed a slap. His brother and older niece are the only ones we even want to see in the foreseeable future.
We don’t really have any alternatives. My nearest relatives are about four hours away, so we can’t say “We’re going to spend Christmas with Sigmagirl’s second cousins twice removed.” I suggested that next year we invent something we’ve always wanted to do. Like coal mining.
Well it suddenly got better…a young relative from Florida had never seen snow. She told her mom (both staying at my house in country on top of a high hill) that she prayed for snow. Her mom told me to buy her a sled, as thats all she wanted. Being Scrooge, i refused, saying we had not had snow here in 2 yrs, in fact i rode my Harley every weekend the past 2 yrs…so Christmas Eve, a warning comes on TV…winter strom Euclid took a last minute shift south, and my county was now epicenter…quick last minute trip to strore, with minutes to spare, to buy sleds. She had a blast sledding in deep snow…you can tell she had never seen snow before, by the way she rolled in it with a huge smile…for hours. I had no smiles as i shoveled out my steep drive.
I had a really good Christmas. My Christmas Eve plans got cancelled but I received another invitation and that was way better. Christmas Day was a small family gathering and we ate and ate and laughed and had a good time. I’m past the age of getting presents so I didn’t have to be disappointed on that front either.
Christmas was ok. It was nice spending time with my family, but my family rubbed my husband the wrong way, so I heard a lot about that. From both my husband and my family. I don’t like being in the middle of that crap.
Plus, there was an unexpected blizzard, so it’s not like I can just get up and drive back home with the kids (though my husband did take off yesterday - he had been planning to do so before, but the situation with my family solidified that decision; he’s lucky he made it back).
sigh I love my family so dearly, but like most, they’re fairly dysfunctional and my husband doesn’t accept that. Normally it’s not a big deal, but for some reason this year it was. The kids have been awesome, though, and it was fantastic to see aunts and uncles and nephews.
I like reading other Doper’s stories, so thanks for making this thread, Quasimodal
So as not to totally hijack this thread, I’ll just say my Christmas was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.
Bosda- I know you don’t know me from Adam, but I’m still sorry for what you’re experiencing. I have read and enjoyed many of your posts for a long time & you have my condolences.
I almost forgot…despite the fact that I’m on “vacation,” I’ve had twice daily status calls since Monday because of an emergency at work.
2nd day of sledding. The little girl forced me to try it. 10 acreas, all steep down hill, 3 acre pond at bottom. Wow. What a rush. Put car wax on sled to go Mach 2.
Then, 2 large deer came out of the woods, with a younger one following. She had never seen deer before. They waltzed right up to the snowman she made yesterday.
Funny how what i take for granted, like the daily deer, fox, huge turtles, snakes, wild turkeys…as well as stuff i despise, like deep snow, are what a little girl from urban Florida will now cherish forever.
Bah, humbug.