Very often these days families have spread far and wide, making it harder with every year to get everyone together for a family celebration during the holidays.  In addition so many families have been through divorces, that can cause rifts during the holidays, especially when children have to choose which parents to visit on Christmas Day.

Our family is one of those where both divorce and moving away from the area where the family grew up has meant that getting everyone together for the holidays is pretty much impossible any more.

It’s sad really, because when I was growing up, we were the only ones on my Mother’s side of the family who lived away from the area that the family had belonged in for generations, and we always made it to my Grandmother’s house for Christmas, as did everyone else.

I have many memories of Christmases Past which I wrote about on Yahoo Voices.

I hope you have time to follow the story there and to learn about our family Christmas traditions, now fading into distant memory, but which I hope by writing about has helped to keep those memories alive for future generations.

Yes I’m English, but I moved to the USA in 1994 and lived there for 15 years, only returning to the UK in 2009, so as well as now being a dual American/British Citizen, I had 15 years to adopt the American lifestyle and to get used to spending the last weekend in November having a much earned break.

You would think that by being in the UK for over 2 years I would have got over this feeling by now, and I am sure that I would have, if it were not for having many friends and contacts who live in the USA, as well as my two daughters, whose Christmas presents I was shopping for Thanksgiving Day online to try and get some good deals.

In addition to this, I have been creating lenses (pages) on Squidoo that are related to the Black Friday sales, and reading lots of other pages about how people celebrate Thanksgiving, so it’s difficult to cut yourself off from everything that’s happening across the pond.

So here I am sitting in an office, on a day that’s not terribly busy, a lovely sunny day too, which is fairly rare for November in the UK, and I wish that I could have been at home so that Debbie and I could have gone for a lovely walk in The New Forest.

We are planning to do that tomorrow, but the weather man already said it’s going to be a chilly night tonight, and knowing our luck it will also be cloudy as well.  At this time of the year in the UK you have to pick your moments, you can’t always afford to put things off until tomorrow, because the weather might not be on your side.

Well those are my thoughts for this day after Thanksgiving.  I hope everyone that we know in the USA had a wonderful day yesterday.  Meantime instead of wishing that we too had a 4-day weekend, I am going to think ahead to next Easter, when we get our 4-day weekend, and in the USA it’s just another 2-day one.

The end of August is not only the last public holiday, it also marks the end of summer, and with it beginning to get dark around 8:30pm on the south coast of England, an hour earlier than it was a month ago, it’s not going to be long before Autumn is upon us and those short cold damn days that lead up to Winter are going to be what we face for the next six months.  I could swear that when we went out for a drive in the countryside yesterday we saw trees already beginning to take on a yellow or reddish hue.

While the Summer began quite nicely in the UK, August has actually been very wet and rather mild, leaving many people still longing for some nice hot days out, either at the beach or having a picnic somewhere in the country.

This coming weekend the USA will see Labor Day weekend, which also marks the end of Summer there, but then residents do at least still have Thanksgiving to look forward to, a nice 4 day weekend at the end of November.

As a dual British/American Citizen I sometimes wish that I could have both sets of holidays, since in the UK we have plenty of days off between New Years Day and Memorial Day at the end of May, which is the first public holiday that many Americans enjoy.  Still, it’s this time of year at the end of the summer when it is really depressing to have to work for almost 4 whole months without a break.

Maybe, just maybe, we will get lucky this year and have an Indian Summer, a nice week or two to look forward to in September or October.  Who knows…

What are your thoughts on public holidays?  Which are your favourites (or favorites even) and why?

Stay safe, stay warm (or cool), have a great time with family and friends.

Best Wishes for the holiday season.

Tony & Debbie

ASDA prices are already low, so you know this will be an opportunity to get a great bargain Christmas Gift.

CLICK HERE to see what the ASDA Advent Calendar has on offer today, and don’t forget to bookmark the page and keep coming back.

Clicking on any photo will open a larger version in a new window.
Maximise the window to see the photo full size.

The Journey

We left Southampton the day before Christmas Eve, a very icy day in the South of England, and headed up to Heathrow Airport where we spent the night.  We had decided that it was better to drive up earlier, rather than risk bad weather, traffic jams and breakdowns, especially as we were flying out to Florida on Christmas Eve.   Debbie managed to get us a good deal for a night in a hotel plus parking for the duration of our trip – she is amazing at finding good deals online.

We  hadn’t been able to get direct flights to Miami from London, since Christmas is a very busy time, and the flights were almost all fully booked, and if not the remaining seats were horribly expensive.  With my only having got a job a month earlier after 3 months out of work, we had to make do with a cheaper option, and we managed to find a good connection with American Airlines changing planes in Raleigh/Durham in North Carolina, which worked out well.

Debbie was really stressed about travelling to the USA, since the last time she came into Miami she got held up for 15 hours in Immigration, but this time all went well, with the immigration officers in Raleigh waiting for her and having read her file before we arrived.    On then to Miami, which had worried us, since we wouldn’t be landing until about 9:30pm at night, then had to pick up our rental car and drive 15 miles up to Hollywood Beach where we were staying.

The flight landed on time however, and since we had already gone through immigration, we just had to pick up our bags and get a shuttle to the car rental location.  It was nice to get an upgrade to an SUV, however we did have problems with it later, but that’s another story, and we got to the motel about 11pm.

I had called the owner a few days before to tell them that we would be a little late arriving, and they left the room unlocked with the key inside.   More about the Motel later, but by now I am sure you are desperate for some pictures, so I will begin with a walk early Christmas Morning on Hollywood Beach.

Christmas Day On Hollywood Beach

The beach had quite a lot of seaweed on it from the storms of the previous day, the sky was rather ominous, and there were some good waves coming in, as we took a much needed walk along the beach after having sat on airplanes so much the day before.

There were also a lot of jellyfish washed up from the storm, which look like plastic bags.  I am not sure if they can still sting you when dead, but we weren’t about to touch them and risk it.

 This is the Motel that we were staying at, and as you can see it’s right by the beach.  It’s one of the older style Hollywood Motels, with a number of rooms above a row of shops.  No p0ol, but a great terrace where you can sit out and watch the world go by.

You can get an indication of just how many people go to the beach on Christmas Day, even when it’s cloudy, by looking at these pictures below.  You also see some rather strange sights!  I’m not sure whether all of these people were living or not, some looked remarkably like Zombies…

This is the view from the terrace at the Motel.  You couldn’t really ask for a place that is closer to the beach.  People even took Christmas Trees to the beach and sat around eating and drinking, and even the Lifeguard had a Santa hat on!

After a fairly quiet day of recovering after the long flight – we didn’t get to sleep until the equivalent of 5am UK time, we went out for a nice Italian meal in the evening at a restaurant on the boardwalk.

Much more to follow in the next installment of our trip to Florida.  We hope you enjoy the photos, and next it’s Boxing Day and we get to see the girls…