Christmas is a sacred time in the band family calendar, the month of December is always blocked off as a ‘no show’ month. The offers come in but it’s the one time I think no one finds it hard to turn the work down. It’s the annual sabbatical, the year’s sabbath, whatever that looks like for each of the little family units, whether it’s hibernating in Nashville, enjoying the luxury of routine or finally having uncompromised time with family. For us it means Northern Ireland.
This was our first Christmas with a home of our own in Bangor to start making traditions in. Sure the walls are still bare and we didn’t quite have the productive time in it we imagined but we had a proper tree (an artificial one skinny enough to fit our little space) and made a point of spending multiple evenings plopped on the sofa basking in the joys of British television (special thanks to The Crown and Planet Earth)
We had two weeks of soaking up the coast and trudging back and forth between our parents houses eating their food and enjoying the easy somewhat eccentric banter that only comes with family. We were concerned the time was going to feel short, not long enough to recover from the year and ready ourselves for the one ahead but, however long, Christmas is a different sort of break, it’s also the closing chapter of a year, and possibly the only time we feel we can actually allow yourself to fully stop and eventually switch off. Despite the fact that it’s a busy season in itself, it’s a welcome world away from the rest of the year.
forrestplace 