My partner, the kids and I will do a mini "grand tour" around the UK from tomorrow through to Christmas Eve. We used to make a bigger thing of our "grand tour", which thanks to an extended and geographically-diverse family would often involve a week or more on the road travelling to half a dozen or more different towns, but since the kids were born we nowadays say "if you want to see us at Christmas, family... then you come to us"! But this year we're going to spend a couple of days with my partner's brother and his new baby, then a couple of days with my mother and my sisters. (My partner's husband is staying home with the dog!)
Then it's back home to Oxfordshire for our usual Christmas traditions, which are adapted from a variety of different family traditions that we've brought together, along with some we've adopted from other cultures or invented for ourselves. Duck pancakes in plum sauce on Christmas Eve, followed by a book exchange. Presents and eating-too-much on Christmas Day (my partner and I have a longstanding competition whereby I try to make enough savoury food that nobody has room for dessert, and she tries to make desserts that are so-appealing that people force themselves to eat them anyway: so far, she's winning). Raclette and kirsch on New Year's Eve and staying up late to see the New Year in. And then the following week sees both my birthday and our eldest child's birthday. And then the Christmas party for the volunteers of a nonprofit I founded (we do it in January because it's way cheaper to do a Christmas party then!).
Folks have been keeping themselves sane in the long dark nights of the middle of winter with feast days and parties for centuries, if not millennia. It speaks to something distinctly human that these traditions stay alive to this day.
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