The Holidays are approaching, faster than usual this year if you ask me.
I have yet to buy a gift, write Christmas cards or think about what to bake and we haven’t put up our Christmas lights yet.
I’m approaching this holiday in a very relaxed way.
My children are adults now so I no longer have to start Christmas shopping weeks in advance to find that much wanted Lego set, action figure or CD.
Christmas at our home is now about time together. It isn’t often that the four of us all sleep under the same roof or wake up and have waffles together.
My favourite gift, one that isn’t wrapped, is sitting around the dining table with my family to play a game of Blokus or Balderdash.
We all have a competitive side and look forward to the challenge of a board game and a good laugh.
When I was a child, my father always had CBC radio playing in our house and on Christmas Eve we would sit together listening to stories on the Christmas broadcast and the music of the Boston Pops Orchestra.
Those memories, of sitting with my Dad are very special to me. Stuart McLean’s “Vinyl Café: A Christmas Collection” is a very funny audiobook for the holidays, and you are guaranteed to laugh as you listen to “Dave Cooks the Turkey.”
A great book for kids to uncover interesting facts about the holidays is “Christmas unwrapped: a Kid’s winter wonderland of holiday trivia” by Amy Shields.
If you prefer something more traditional, like the ballet, the library has “The Nutcracker” on DVD as well as numerous Christmas music CDs, movies such as “Elf”, “The Polar Express” and my personal favourites, Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “The Sound of Music.”
If you prefer to make gifts, we have numerous craft books. “Mason Jar Christmas Gift Recipes” by Melinda Rolf has easy recipes such as Mason Jar s’mores to make for your neighbours.
My extended family live in Ontario, which means that on Christmas Day we make the traditional phone call East.
The phone gets passed around with the intention of all of us getting a chance to talk to one another, but in the end some of us have talked to the same person twice, while others are missed entirely.
My hope is that one day my entire family is together for the holidays, perhaps on a beach somewhere.
My plan for the holidays is to turn off my phone, spend time with my family, read by the fire and contemplate the coming year and hopefully win a few rounds of Blokus.
Dianne Broadbent is an Assistant Community Librarian and a champion Blokus player.
