Useful and Uplifting Tips for the Holiday Season

If you are not extremely careful, these grey, cloudy, short Geneva days can chip away at even the chirpiest of Christmas spirts. So, once your tree is up, your presents wrapped, your cards and parcels sent, the fridge stuffed to exploding with food and drink here are some extra mood-enhancing activities to consider.

• When invited out to group luncheon events, always remember to choose from the more expensive end of the menu. In the final tally and division, no one is going to remember that you had the green salad and the single Malakoff (deep fried cheese ball) with tap water while everyone else ate suprème de pintade fumée avec foie gras, the risotto aux langoustines, had cheese AND dessert, and drank several bottles of a cracking ‘89 Chassagne Montrachet.
• If you’re feeling any domestic culinary pressure (either real or imagined) bake a batch or two of the easiest of all festive cookies – the coconut macaroon. Whipped egg white, sugar and desiccated coconut decorated with a perky candied cherry fulfils the cookie-imperative nicely. They are fat-free, cholesterol-free, and might even be vegan and gluten-free depending on where the egg whites have come from. Store them in sealed tins and smugly serve when appropriate.
• Congratulate yourself for not having been a control-freak fall-tidy-up gardener and consider the brown, straggly, and wizened plants outside your windows. After careful study, you will notice that small friendly birds are picking at their miniscule seeds. Normal-sized seeds from the commercial suet-and-seed bird balls would undoubtedly choke these little golf-ball-sized-birds to death. Consider yourself as a St. Francis /Mother Theresa hybrid.
• Before the big day (evening of the 24^th/Swiss, morning of the 25^th/ Canadian) vacuum under the couch. You will find several nasty things, but also lost objects that can be turned into thoughtful Christmas gifts. Why, just this morning I have found a brand new blue toy pick-up truck unknowingly lost since last Christmas, and a watch that I have been looking for for years.
• Try to drag yourself away from your various entertainment and information screens at least once. Go to a book shop and browse the shelves. Take along an elusive title and feel thrilled if you find it, and justified in your Kindle Life if you don’t.
• Examine and reorganize your mouse-catching activities. For example, oil your mouse-traps and renew your jar of peanut butter. I see that the jar that I have been (unsuccessfully) using has a best-before date of 2009 which might account for the rather rancid smell that is obviously NOT attracting either the mouse in the kitchen or its new colleague in the basement. Have a serious talk with the cat.

When all of the above fail to deliver, then it is time to either head for the hills, the snow and the sunshine. Or, close the drapes and settle down with the macaroon tin and a new Netflix series.

In any case, Merry Christmas one and all.