'Tis the Season to eat raisins.

So Christmas has officially begun for the Vallentine household. The Christmas season had begun for the Horn-turned-Vallentine contingent way back at Thanksgiving, but proper Christmas - the actual "doing" of Christmas - started this weekend.

Friday evening we picked up Mark's sister Sarah and her boyfriend Tim from the Weston-super-Mare train station on the way into Brean and stayed at his mum's place over the weekend. Sarah is planning to stay down here until the day after Boxing Day (no, it doesn't have a name), but Tim is spending Christmas Day with his family, so he's actually taking the train up to Hull (that's in the North) today. That meant that this weekend was the only time when everyone was going to be there, so we tried to be extra festive, and hence, kicked off the Christmas party early.

All that really meant is we started upping the quantities of food eaten per meal, played some games (including the Wii, which was, as expected, a big hit), and then last night sat around and watched while Tim opened his presents in front of us.

But the main thing that tells me that Christmas is here (and the reason for this post, as you might have guessed) is that the raisins have arrived.

I think I've probably ranted about this in front of all of you before, but let's recap. Pretty much all the traditional British dishes/foods eaten at Christmastime involve raisins or sultanas in some fashion. All the stuff that everyone only eats during the holiday, which everyone gets excited about contain raisins. Mince pies, christmas cake (which sounds great but is, in fact, fruitcake), christmas pudding (which isn't pudding at all for an American, but a raisin-flavored, raisin filled booby trap) have all gone to the dark side. Normally I'm ok for the actual Christmas dinner, but I have in fact seen brussel sprouts and stuffing each with raisins in. It's pretty tragic.

This year I'm making the stuffing (just in case) and hoping to make a pecan pie to create a small non-raisin safe haven for myself. I think my British citizenship may be held up by the fact that I don't accept raisins, since it seems to be a national pasttime over here (it's not restricted just to Christmas - oh no sireee).

But as you tuck in to your apple pies and tree-shaped sugar cookies this year, spare a small thought for me, a lone ex-pat in a sea of sultanas, trying to celebrate a raisin-free Christmas.


(...and Jenny, if you post a comment about how raisins are good for me and I just need to think myself out of this problem, so help me, Christmas or no Christmas...)

:)