Ten.

 I'm not a religious person (anymore) but I still like to celebrate Christmas, to me it's more about traditions, family and friends. I never know how I'm going to feel about the day as there have been many negative changes in my life these last few years. I am training myself to see the holiday for what it was intended, a fun cheerful time to break up the darkest days and impending winter. I don't mean to take away anything from people who see it as a holy time, it's just a fact as to why so many religions hold special holidays with lights, gifts, feasts around this time of year.

 I didn't go to mass Christmas eve this year. I usually go as part of the tradition, I had stopped for a while but I found that I was missing something and so started again years ago. I mostly went to hear the choir and see old friends who came home for Christmas. Last year however I realized that I no longer enjoyed it, the tradition was lost. I was alone, I have no family. I don't know most of the people who come now, there is no more choir to speak of, they put it at five o'clock and there was a chorus of wailing kids who have never been to mass since last Christmas, with parents that had no control of the situation. Instead of a gathering after, everyone now rushes home to Christmas eve dinner, as I drove away last year I said to myself, "sadly this is my last time going".

 This Christmas was good, mom was able to leave the home for a day out, my sister lives a little more than an hour away and we go there for Christmas day lunch, it's always been our tradition that the big meal is at noon. Mom was in a happy mood, we enjoyed ourselves, sometimes she was in her own world and sometimes she was with us, each year it's less but we take what we can get.

 This year was another unbelievable marker in time for us. This was Christmas number ten without my Dad. Where did the time go, I remember blogging about it, that one day it will be year ten and now, here we are! I really miss him at Christmas because he could be the biggest kid of us all at Christmas. I often joke that he was my eating buddy, we both liked the old style Christmas cakes, cookies and desserts. Most people these days only want the store bought goop so there is no point in making any as I will be the only one eating them. I don't feel sad however; I guess I have gotten used to the idea that he is gone, I'm just unnerved by the passage of time. I also didn't want to feel melancholy, we had a good day and I wanted to just accept the day. If you remember only a few weeks ago mom could never have left her nursing home, we even suspected she may not make it to Christmas, now here she was, enjoying herself, even making funny jokes and I wanted to leave it at that.

 People think the worst thing at Christmas is a house full of family, (I know there are exceptions like abuse or heavy drinking/drugs etc) over the last few weeks I had read many blogs or posts online, moaning about family at Christmas, I have experienced both large family gatherings when I was younger to now, just me here alone, trust me there is nothing worse than waking up to an empty house Christmas morning. Sometimes it feels like past memories are not really memories at all, they are scenes from a Christmas movie that I had watched, old photos tell me the memories are real, that it wasn't a movie. I no longer feel hopeless about this either, I just need to build a new family, I was hoping to have made connections by now but no. Still there is next year and at the rate time keeps speeding up, I don't have to wait long for next Christmas. Lol, maybe I will just leave everything up and pretend I'm efficient.