Tips for Surviving the Holidays

Top Tips for Surviving the Festive Season…

Claudia Carroll is from Harper Collins, a publisher in London, whose web site I visit once in a while. She has some tips to surviving the holidays. You’ll notice the British twist on words and sayings here. I’ve edited the tips just a bit. I hope you can appreciate this advice from across the water.

	Well hello all, and can you believe we're already into the mad, mental run-up to Christmas? So anyway, whether you love or hate the festive season, I thought I'd give you my top Christmas survival tips: 1) Absolutely and utterly bid goodbye to good taste... Come on, you spend all year stressing about matchy-matchy this and co-ordinating that; this is the one time of year you can fling just about every bit of mad coloured tinsel and twinkly lights at every spare surface you have in the house. And not care. 2) Blast out cheesy Christmas songs and for the entire month of December,.secure in the knowledge that only a Bah Humbug Scrooge would ever dare try to shut you up. I particularly recommend 'All I Want For Christmas is YOU-HOO-HOOOOOOO' by Mariah Carey for said purposes. 3) Follow the EWYFL diet. Eat what you feel like. Everyone knows January is a miserable month no good for anything but dieting anyway. 4) Watch movies that pull at your heartstrings and sob uncontrollably in front of them, for about the hundredth time. I'm talking 'It's A Wonderful Life' or if you are in a Hugh Grant humour, 'Love, Actually.' But if that doesn't do it for you, remember that we've been promised a 'Downtown Abbey' Christmas double bill special. Will Mary and Mathew finally get it together.....?????? Will the cousin no one cared about who survived the Titanic then totally changed his accent, return to stake his claim to the estate? My nerves are in flitters waiting to see......Kleenex at the ready.... 5) Remember it's only ONE DAY. That's all, folks. Years ago, the whole county would basically shut down for a fortnight and no one would do a tap till well after New Year, but all changed. Now, on Stephen's Day you can hit the sales if you were lucky enough to have been given cash by some kindly relative, that is..... 6) Wangle an invitation to someone else's for freebie grub. Let's face it, last thing you need are other people descending on you, eating you out of house and home, drinking every drip of alcohol you have bar the Jays domestic fluid under the sink and then staying till all hours, burping in front of the TV and hogging the warmest armchair by the fire. At least, if it's the other way round, you can descend on some kindly relative or pal and inflict all this on them instead. Far, far better idea. 7) Have a good laugh at the super-organised. You know, the type who brag about shopping in the January sales and snapping up all the reduced to clear Xmas cards and wrapping paper...to keep for the following Christmas. Similarly, you can have a right told snigger at all the last minute merchants. People like me, in other words. 8) Snuggle up inside and bear in mind, it might snow. Heavily. Like last year. In which case, you have the perfect excuse not to leave the comfort of home and no one can say a single word to you. In case this event though, it's well worth your while stockpiling. 9) Opt out altogether! You could always do what a pal of mine does without fail every year. Tells all his London family and friends he's spending the holiday in Dublin and vice versa. Then he happily holes up here with the phone off the hook and has a proper holiday for himself, unfettered by any obligations to anyone and most importantly of all...no unwanted callers. Nice one, if you can pull it off.