So Christmas is over for another year and, despite various illnesses in the household, it was a good one. It began on the morning of Christmas Eve with some kitchen prep. The Mother made the honey-roasted, clove-studded ham, prepared the vegetables and made one of the stuffings and I made the chestnut stuffing and prepped the bread sauce. All to some cracking Christmas music and wearing a gold sequined apron, of course. The Husband and I then walked over to Knutsford Terrace, a row of al fresco bars and restaurants in Tsim Sha Tsui, for the traditional lunch with my lifelong childhood friend Jen and her fiance Adam. Good food, good drink, good company and lots of early present-unwrapping ensued. We then trekked through the seething mass of people on the very busy shopping streets of Tsim Sha Tsui to take the MTR (Hong Kong's far cleaner, cheaper and more reliable version of the London Underground) to Central, where we were due to meet The Parents at church. Arriving earlier than expected, we decided to go for a little Christmas drinky and chose the rooftop bar in Prince's Building, where we sipped a crisp New Zealand white wine and a mojito whilst looking out over the harbour and across the skyscrapers of Central.
At the designated time we walked up Battery Path to St. John's Cathedral where the Christingle service we go to every year in Hong Kong was being held. Half an hour before it was due to start it was already full to the rafters, so much so they had even set up a big screen outside with a live feed to broadcast the service to people outside. It was a beautiful sight when the lights were dimmed and the cathedral was lit with the candles held by the congregation, accompanied by the sound of carols being sung.
After the service we hopped on the Star Ferry across to Kowloon and gazed at all the Christmas lights on the sides of the skyscrapers, before elbowing our way through the crowds on Canton Road to reach Civic Square, the cluster of bars and restaurants underneath the complex of apartment buildings in which The Parents live. A couple of lychee martinees later and we went up to the flat to prepare a simple dinner of parsnip and pancetta pasta, eaten in front of The Snowman. An early bed (in order to be asleep by the time Father Christmas arrives with his sack full of pressies) meant that we were up earlyish in the morning, bounding into the living room to see whether the big man himself had been. Bulging sackfuls on the sofas confirmed that he had indeed visited and we got down to the important task of delving into the stockings and pillowcases to discover what he had brought us. Half an hour later, we were still pulling presents out. We must have been very good this year.
A breakfast of ham and hot buttered toast, washed down with Buck's Fizz, was next on the cards, followed by the overseas phone calls to family members in Australia.Then came further present opening and before we knew it, it was time to prepare the lunch which, in our family, is just nibbly bits - smoked salmon on triangles of bread, sausage rolls, a selection of cheese, salmon filo pastry parcels - as we have our main Christmas dinner in the evening. After lunch, we walked around the harbour front to work up an appetite for the feast to come, before opening more presents and playing a fiercely competitive game of Cranium. I managed to draw the short straw and had The Father on my team. He had absolutely no idea what was going out throughout the game and at one point drew the name of the category rather than the thing he was actually supposed to draw. I suppose something like that has always got to happen on Christmas day.
We dressed up for the evening and emerged in our finest, ready to quaff some more Champers before the gargantuan feast that is our Christmas dinner. We had a traditional turkey with all the trimmings, followed by Christmas pudding and mince pies, all made by The Mother. It was all delicious but we soon fell into that coma-like state that always occurs post-Christmas dinner. Time for bed.
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