Christmas 251216

There's a story in my head every Christmas morning,  A young chap, comfortable middle class family, is opening presents on the living room floor. It's warm and dry, he has hot chocolate to sustain the work. He's excited as the mound of gift-wrap gets higher. Glittery things emerge. Eventually, there are no more parcels to open and he bursts into tears.
"What's wrong my petal, my love, my heir", go his doting parents.
"It's not ENOUGH", he rages.
True, dat! Once you start with The Stuff it's never enough: another blanket, a second digging-stick. a better obsidian knife . . . and 10,000 years later there's no rain-forest and the water in the stream smells peculiar.
A brief respite from that nagging feeling of St Chrimbo's Disappointment :

• Don't Let me Down this Christmas - Waiting for Smith [new talent!]
• Drummer boy: you can never have enough parapa pum pum
• Parapa pum one - Pentatonix
• Parapa pum two - Bowie & Bing
• Parapa pum three - Alex Boyé helps the homeless
• Guillot prends ton tambourin. The French march to a different drummer
• In the Bleak Midwinter - King's College Cambs Choir
• Калядки 
• Carúl Inis Córthaidh - local [to me] carol in the Mixolydian mode

Now haway wi' ye, back to the family maelstrom. You know you love it. Joyeux Noël, Счастливого рождества, Nollaig shona dhuit.
Postscript Along the flaggy shore. The words by Seamus Heaney