Cairo!! Have fun.

I hope you soon feel better, Mort. It does seem to be a bad year for bugs (or maybe we say that every year). I'm more or less better from mine, though I can't say I feel wonderful - and now son has got something similar. Unless bugs can be transmitted over the phone/internet, he hasn't got it from me. He is the cook at Christmas. This could be a bit disruptive. I'm all for staying at home BY MYSELF, but they don't seem to think that's a good idea. It would be a lot less stressful.

Mary,  the idea of someone spending Christmas on their own, through choice,seems to make people feel rather uncomfortable. There then follow cries of "Oh you can`t spend it on your own!". Why not?  No one ever says "Oh you can`t spend the weekend on your own".   I`ve spent Christmas on my own in the past and, frankly, it was rather a relief to avoid the somewhat forced `hospitality` that prevails. Even with family. Although having said that, I`m not greatly looking forward a solo Mort Christmas this year. Perverse? Me? Probably

I agree with you, Mort.  I think I have already said on the Bah Humbug thread (or whatever it was called! ) that I feel very lucky not to be a member of the sort of family who have "expectations" about my activities and whereabouts on Christmas Day.  I also found that I managed to break away from any such expectations which might have developed on a smaller scale, by moving 300 miles away from my family at age 21 and landing a choral job which conveniently meant I had to be in London until Christmas lunchtime

I was talking to my cousin about this the other evening.  She still feels the burden of certain family traditions even though her family is now scattered all over the world, because Christmas was always made into a big thing.

I have only once achieved a solo Christmas (in 2000) and was looking forward to another one last year, but my plans were changed at the last moment by the arrival on my doorstep of my former flatmate who had walked out of a nightmarish Christmas with relatives who live near me, and now had no means of getting home.  It was fun anyway

I'm looking forward to Christmas at my mum's this year, as I haven't spent Christmas with her since 1999.  Had I done so every year, I might have been quite tired of it by now

That I can understand!  I doubt I'm especially good company on your average Christmas afternoon.  This year I will have sung two church services on Sunday (morning service and Service of Lessons and Carols), been to work on Monday, sung Midnight Mass, come back to church in time for Christmas morning service, and by the time that's over (normally accompanied by a heavy head cold and throat infection) all I really want to do is sleep.

I have been known to excuse myself from Christmas dinner, go to bed, and sleep through until the next morning

Bad luck, MJ! It's a nightmare, I know. And it's the time spent, isn't it? Worrying, on the phone, traipsing around. And buyers are such wimps!! 

Thanks for the sympathy martle and thanks for the poo mort.

These buyers were the same ones who wanted our house way back in June/July. Everything was going well till their buyers lost their buyers' buyers. To cut a tedious story short, we'd twice recently reduced in order to let them buy our house as they'd had to reduce theirs twice but now they've decided not to move after all - or so we've been told.

It is possible that you've been a victim of a certain sharp practice known as "Postman Coming Out To Work With A Load Of 'While You Were Out...' Notes And No Actual Parcels".