20th, December, 2017

We were expecting the Christmas Carolers to our house that night, so I was forced to put up my embarrassingly tiny Christmas tree with a little manger around it. I vowed I would get a huge tree and a beautiful manger for the next Christmas. Every year we put our Star out – it rains, forcing us to remove it. So this year we decided to put it inside the house  It still rained that night.

The Carolers came singing inside with someone disguised as the Santa Claus, who I knew was one of my friends so I tried to pull off the fake white beard. With no hope, I gave up until he revealed himself and handed me some chocolates. And when they sang ‘Merry Christmas and a Happy New year‘ song, my Santa friend started dancing. I suggested him not to try dancing at all in the future, ever.

24th, December, 2017

2300 hrs

Church was scheduled at 4.30 am and I was supposed to be sleeping, but there I laid wide wake in my bed reverting ‘Thank you‘  to a few wishes.

It was 2.45 am and hadn’t slept a wink. I was reluctant to take bath, but I decided to go for it despite the cold winds. Lazily, I got dressed to celebrate another year of Christmas.

I realized my photographer was missing. My little elf was celebrating Christmas in Australia.

We made it to church earlier than ever, at 3.30 am. I blame my mum’s festive enthusiasm. Once seated inside the church, I was battling against my temptations to sleep. I thanked God when the service was over. We stopped at a restaurant for breakfast en route to our house.

I was sleepy as hell, but that didn’t stop my mum from making me cut the vegetables on Christmas, while my bed was begging me to come sleep.

My dad made me distribute cake to out neighbors. To be honest, I did not enjoy it.

During one such visits, I entered the house and my neighbor’s 7-year old kid just went, “Akka, you’re wearing lipstick”, pointing his hand at my face for a 10 whole seconds. And his 4-year old little brother gets highly excited and screams, “You’re wearing nail polish!”, like they were competing each other at the ‘Guess what make-up I’m wearing’ game. And right then it wasn’t just my lips which were red, my whole face was.

After finishing my dreadful chores, I crashed. Slept like a pig until my dad woke me up for lunch at 4pm. Fried Rice and Mutton gravy. I made paayasam for dessert. Relax, it was a ready-made mix.

At around 6 pm, mum wanted to go to the evening English service at our church. With only a few believers for the evening service, it ended with cake and ginger tea.

We went to St. Antony’s Church to see the Manger set-up. It was beautiful.

But the Manger put up at the Besant Nagar Church beat it by a mile. It was stunning. We parked our car a little away from the church due to the doubtful parking spots there during the festive season.

It was a small walk to the church, when I noticed some men standing outside the Nexa Showroom, in grey suits and how handsome one of them looked. How I wished I was one of the cars from the showroom. :P

Once home, My dad and I decided to check the TV for any good movies. There was nothing good enough as usual. It was just when ‘The Sound Of Music’ movie started in StarMoviesSelect.

I pestered my dad to watch it. Between its ridiculous number of advertisements and my annoying ‘sing along’s, my dad successfully managed to finished the movie. But hey, It’s a musical. It would be a sin not to sing along. I know, I know, ‘It’s a sin to allow you to sing.. blah.. blah..’. Let’s just say I was just high on Christmas spirits.

To summarize my 2017 Christmas it was more peaceful than usual,

• I didn’t bother to upload Christmas pictures on my Instagram or post a story on Snapchat.
• I couldn’t be bothered to put a WhatsApp profile picture or add a cliche story.
• We didn’t have the usual family photo shoot session after Church either.