{"id":24,"date":"2006-12-25T21:48:44","date_gmt":"2006-12-25T21:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/justapollo.co.uk\/blog\/?p=24"},"modified":"2007-01-06T21:53:17","modified_gmt":"2007-01-06T21:53:17","slug":"merry-christmas-everyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justapollo.co.uk\/blog\/2006\/12\/merry-christmas-everyone\/","title":{"rendered":"Merry Christmas Everyone!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I consider how many days of the year I live as if it were Christmas? Perhaps the last 364 days have been Christmas for me, which is why this December 25th didn&#8217;t seem &#8216;special&#8217; like it use to?<\/p>\n<p>In years past, I went to bed, having carefully placed a plate of biscuits and 9 carrots on the table in the hall (we had a wood burning stove, so Father Christmas couldn\u2019t use the chimney) along with a small glass of something alcoholic &#8211; which no doubt would have taken the varnish off the floor tiles if spilt. Then, in eager anticipation, try to sleep, with thoughts of a bearded old man creeping around my bedroom in the dead of night.<br \/>\nThe following morning (5.00am or earlier) I would leap from my bed and drag the overflowing stocking with me to my parents room, where I would proceed to carefully unwrap each and every present.<br \/>\nThe day continued with Grandparents arriving and more presents for me!! I did have to wait until after lunch before unwrapping any more and like many others, the biggest and best present was left till last when I was made to think I had opened everything in sight.<br \/>\nAs the years went by, Christmas became as much about giving presents as receiving them (I know what the Church likes us to think but I was young and that\u2019s my excuse).<\/p>\n<p>This year however, it was unbelievably normal, which is why I considered the above question, or whether in fact I am becoming Mr Scrooge or maybe the Grinch who I think the Queen based her attire on this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I consider how many days of the year I live as if it were Christmas? Perhaps the last 364 days have been Christmas for me, which is why this December 25th didn&#8217;t seem &#8216;special&#8217; like it use to? In years past, I went to bed, having carefully placed a plate of biscuits and 9 carrots [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rambling-again","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justapollo.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justapollo.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justapollo.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justapollo.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justapollo.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/justapollo.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justapollo.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justapollo.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justapollo.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}