We’ve just pulled round from a bout of ‘festivitis’ – that’s my word for spreading ourselves too thinly over the festive period. Being expats, the question every December is ‘are we staying here or going there’? For Christmas, my heart will always be in England, not only because that is where my family is but also because other countries do Christmas so differently.

Though winter in Galicia is so incredibly cold (I didn’t know what a chilblain was till I moved here!), we don’t get snow. We can see it in the mountains some three hours away by car but it just doesn’t happen here in our village. Now, Christmas without the slight chance of snow just isn’t Christmas, so that is one of the reasons for a Brit to like Christmas in his or her homeland.

Spain doesn’t have that cosiness about it in winter: we don’t have ‘click of a switch’ heating and the floors in Spain are tiled, not carpeted. The cold can find its way through your slippers and your woolly socks, so creeping downstairs in your bare feet cannot be on the agenda.

Spaniards celebrate the Noche Buena (the ‘Good Night’), the family gathering for the big supper on Christmas Eve, to include shellfish galore, meat and potatoes and then Roscón, rather like a huge doughnut in shape but more solid in texture. I find it sad to know that there will be mounds of Christmas puddings in England but I can’t buy even one here in our part of Spain.

And that’s where the Christmas hamper comes in! My youngest son carefully picks what he knows will turn us on regarding culinary delights and sends all those puddings, stuffings, pickles, sweets and biscuits to Hubby and I, so that we can have a little bit of England on the day, should we not be making the trip home (and England always will be home).

This year, we really did spread ourselves thinly. Having booked flights for Christmas in England, an afterthought was to visit family in the South of Spain for the beginning of the new year. Permanently on the run, for both Christmas shopping and all the airport comings and goings, the time passed just like that and we have no photos as reminders. Taking presents back to Spain meant paying for another suitcase, especially since I had stocked up on my own Christmas presents of mince pies and Christmas puddings, some for us and some to give to our English friends in Spain, who didn’t get back to Blighty on this occasion. So, the ‘hoped for’ relaxing time wasn’t to be had and we had been too busy to realise it. Still, walking only half-clad along the beach on that first day of January was incredible. Try doing that in England!

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