A Christmas Meme

Linking to This Mummy Maze and Tina Gray {dot} Me for this one. Feel free to join in - please just link back to where you found it!

1. Eggnog or Hot Chocolate? Hot Chocolate - I've also never tried eggnog (and it doesn't sound very appealing so I don't think I ever will).

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Wrapped, plus filling stockings.

3. Coloured lights on tree / house or white? Coloured. I like colourful things!

4. Do you hang mistletoe? No - if you can't kiss me during the year, then you don't deserve to at Christmas.

5. When do you put your decorations up? First weekend after 1st December.

6. What is your favourite holiday dish? The traditional baked turkey dinner but we don't have a baked dinner due to the heat of summer in Australia. And my husband doesn't like turkey much and he does the Christmas cooking in this house. But I usually manage to cook some turkey in between what he's doing.

7. Favourite holiday memory as a child? Spending summers at Woolgoolga in our campervan. We would leave Boxing Day morning around 4am - 2 adults, 5 kids, station wagon with a campervan being towed. 12 hour drive. I don't know how my folks coped!

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I can't remember.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Yes, because that is my husband's Christmas (Austrian) so we do presents after dinner at whoever's house we are at. Then, because my side of the family is English, Santa comes overnight & the kids have Santa presents and stockings to wake up to on Christmas Day, then gifts from my side of the family.

10. How to you decorate your Christmas tree? How the kids do it is the way it stays. There are decorations that are years old, a couple of new ones, and some of the ones the kids have made over the years. The more colour the better. One string of lights on it too. No tinsel this year and it looks so much better.

11. Snow - love it or dread it? I think we all romanticise about a white Christmas. If we could have the snow without the cold slushiness, then bring it on. I could have a baked dinner too!

12. Can you ice skate? Yes, but it has been a LONG time. I learned when I was about 5.

13. Do you remember your favourite gift? Doll furniture individually wrapped. I don't remember the doll house, I just remember pulling present after present out of a huge Santa sack. Every chair was wrapped on its own. Every table. Every person. Every single piece. And they must have really been from Santa because my Mum doesn't remember it (and I know I would remember if I went to that much trouble wrapping pressies!). I would have been in the 4 - 6 age bracket I reckon. My memory from my childhood years is pretty non existent.

14. What's the most important thing about the holidays for you? Being together with family for a meal. I am Catholic but due to our family celebrations being on 2 separate days, last year was the first year we have made it to Christmas Mass (that's really bad, because our eldest is 16 & has only ever been to one Christmas Mass).

15. What is your favourite holiday dessert? I'm usually so full after the main meal that I really don't need dessert. But I will probably have a piece of pavlova this year just because I can. And some of the fruit platter.

16. What is your favourite holiday tradition? Light looking. We live in a suburb where lots of people decorate their houses (including us) so there are many within walking distance. Which means I can drink a Christmas beverage as we go! Disclaimer - I have driving commitments 5 nights a week so I rarely drink alcohol - by having a drink as we go I am killing two birds with the one stone so to speak - please don't deny me my Xmas tipple!

17. What tops your tree? A blue, glittery star in the living room &  black glittery star in the formal lounge room. Yeah, we have two trees.

18. Which do you prefer - giving or receiving? Giving. I love seeing other people's faces when they open their pressies. And I pray to God that I have bought them something they actually like! All I want for Christmas is a box of chocolates. That's what I ask for every year. But I am getting a sunhat this year from one of the kids. I picked it.

19. What is your favourite Christmas song? Just one? Are you serious?! Um......Happy Christmas (War is over), We wish you a Merry Christmas, Jingle Bell Rock, Little Drummer Boy (I hated that one as a kid).

20. Candy canes - yuk or yum? Yuk. The kids don't like them much either. Thank God!

21. Favourite Christmas Show? I work nights so I  miss most of them, but just once I would like to watch Carols in the Domain from start to finish. Or the ones in Melbourne from the Sidney Myer Music Bowl - we went to them one year when I was a kid.

22. Saddest Christmas Song? Happy Christmas (War is Over) - also my favourite. I think I must like to cry.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Karen xx