Last year, I started my Christmas movie a day, epic.  And once again, this year, I doing the same.  Watching schmaltzy films and horror movies and action movies.  But all come with Christmas featured in them.

​We can argue whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie, but other action films, such as Fatman definitely are.

​I'll often have it onwhen I'm knitting or baking.  The feel of the yarn, the small of the cookies, then become intertwined with the film, the music, the memories of previous years.

It is almost as though you can make a memory even bigger and brighter and more wonderful by adding to it again and again and again.

I try to sprinkle in, new films, some of which will become favourites and others are to just to pass the time.  
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A Castle for Christmas was watched the year it came out because I knew one of the ladies who had dyed the yarn for the movie.  It is now the first film that I start my watch days off with.

Then today, watching another Hallmark film (yes, you can joke that they all have the same plot) I was struck by something.

These films are not just feel good films.  

Yes, the women in these films are normally successful, confident women.  Yes, they always find that they have lost touch with life and find meaning through some wonderful handsome man.

But there is one thing that is refreshing in these movies.  These women are always middle age.  They are at least 30 if not early 40s.  They are attractive but that is secondary to the skills that they have in the films.  They are lawyers, CEOs, chefs, you name it.  They are financially independent (mostly) but have often isolated themselves from everyone. 

Yes, they often fall for the guy, but often they fall for finding friendship with other great women.

For me, it is this last thing that I find the most fulfilling with these films.  Connections, relationships and friendship.

I’m down to just three physical Christmas cards a year now.  Gone are the years when I would make 20th or so cards.

Now, both of my parents are gone.  Hubby’s family don’t exchange cards (apart from one sister) and my Niblings are environmentally conscious. The last bastion of of physical cards was the office but the move to remote and hybrid killed that too.

My brother, my sister and hubby’s sister all thanked me.  My mum gave me a hug.

But no one else acknowledged them.  ​

​When I brought this up to my mum she said how people loved them.  Yeah but they couldn’t take 2 secs to even tell me the cards had arrived.  ​

Some years, if there just isn’t time, I will buy a card froma friend or artisan and send that. 

​So now, I just make 3 cards.  

1. My brother and sister in law
2. My sister and brother in law
3. Hubby’s sister.

Today, was a Spa day, a present from work for our team after completing a massive project. 

I was all warm and relaxed from my massage, snuggled in my complimentary robe, knitting and doing my other favourite activity, in these situations; listening to snatches of conversations. 

The two ladies, opposite we’re talking about Christmas and work secret Santas.  One of them asked if the other if they knew of this German tradition where you take a nice, unwanted gift, wrap it and then you play a game to see who will get which gift. 

Of course, there is nothing stopping you from creating your own rules to fit who you are playing with.