Christmas gifts, Christmas trees, Christmas is the time to please.

So Christmas has ended as soon as it had arrived, and while most of us worry about measuring our new waistlines, we are all left to contemplate the festive celebrations for another year.

Did I get the right size turkey? Was there enough tinsel on the tree? Did I watch enough repeats on TV? Ok, you may not be asking yourself these sorts of questions right now, but you might have been asking them before the 25th came around. The point I’m trying to make is that most things, if not everything, seems to fall into place ready for the big day, so much so that there are no questions that need answering. You may not share my opinion, but there is no doubt that more often than not Christmas brings a certain collectiveness amongst families and neighbourhoods alike.

When I was younger, I sometimes used to view Christmas as some sort of judgement day, where Santa Claus decided whether you had been good enough throughout the year to deserve a shedload of presents. It wasn’t a frightening sort of judgement day of course, more one that used to tease you, making you think that you had to be on your best behaviour. Either way, unless you had robbed Woolworths of all their pick and mix, you ended up getting what you wanted after all.

A lot of people have also said that Christmas has become too commercial, whereas all it has done is move synonymously with the society of today. The modern day has become commercialised as a whole, and so with Christmas being the biggest celebration of the year, it was bound to get pounced on by companies to exploit over the years. Even though commercialism can sometimes be seen as our worst enemy, pressuring us to buy everything Cheryl Cole has her face on, I think it thrives at Christmas time. Maybe we realise afterwards that some of the stuff we’ve bought is useless junk, but businesses mainly do a good job in surrounding us with bargains, enchanting us into their stores. Anyway, it’s not really Christmas anymore until you’ve seen the Coca Cola advert, is it?

I feel Christmas is the only acceptable time where you can wear silly paper hats at the dinner table, tell ridiculously rubbish jokes and throw calorie count charts outside the window without a second thought. All of these I feel contribute to what they call the “magic of Christmas” and even though it may all feel superficial at the time, what other part of the year can you realistically get away with doing these things? I mean, I dressed up as a reindeer at work, and even though I looked silly beyond belief, if it hadn’t had been Christmas, I wouldn’t have done it. So for these and many other reasons Christmas must be seen as different and unique to every other time of the year.

As the snow slowly melts away, and the focus is taken away from Christmas and onto the January sales, I sometimes wonder if the snowman still standing proudly outside my house is outstaying his welcome at all. Maybe the longer he stays up, the longer it will feel like Christmas, and with he already being a week old he’s got to be closing in on a Guinness World Record for longest standing snowman in Britain. Having said that, I don’t think I’ll be calling up the police anytime soon if he gets stolen by the time morning comes.

Snowman or no snowman, it’s been the second consecutive Christmas where there has been snow around, and for me a little sprinkling of the white fluffy stuff makes Christmas seem a little more real. As everyone revels in the presents they received, the best present for me was seeing all my family happy and well, with the added bonus that they loved my presents. However, no matter how much I promise myself, I don’t think my shambolic wrapping skills will ever improve.

So, as my collective thoughts and memories of Christmas 2010 draw to a close, I really do hope all of you have had the Christmas you all so richly deserved. Even though all our sights are now set on New Year’s parties next weekend I hope that Christmassy feeling hasn’t left you just yet! Enjoy the rest of Boxing Day and whatever holiday you may have left, and I’m going to end on something I’ve learnt over the years by leaving you with a quote from Calvin Coolidge; “Christmas is not a time nor a season, it is a state of mind”.

A snow covered Britain: Winter wonderland or snow joke?

So this is what it feels like to live inside a snow globe? All covered in white and for many of us, trapped in our own homes until the snowfall subsides.

While children and adults pretending to be children are making the most out of the white stuff, a large amount of others have had to reschedule major plans because of it. What’s more, according to experts and meteorologists we need to start getting used to harsh winters like this as they are probably going to stick around for the long term, perhaps for even up to a century.

After the ridiculous snowfall from earlier on this year now fresh in the memory, should the country now focus on being better equipped to cope with this kind of weather next time it strikes? For example, Northern Ireland has recorded it’s lowest ever temperature at -18°C, while also describing it’s road network as the worst it’s ever been. With trends like this happening all over the UK, and with grit supplies struggling to cope with the sheer demand, what changes need to be made to make our daily lives fit in with the snow?

Only to a certain extent can we anticipate heavy snowfall, although in the future when there will be more advanced technology to hand then weather further down the line can be predicted with greater ease. Studded tyres have also been seen as a solution, but right now we get nowhere near enough days of snow to warrant this. Plus, with the weather becoming more erratic due to the forces of global warming and climate change, there is no guarantee we will be able to spot extreme conditions heading our way.

Not only does the snow affect transport network, but also it has hit consumer trade across the country. On a personal level I have noticed this dramatically in the local supermarket that I work in, where one day it will be heaving with panic buyers who purchase as if it’s the next ice age, and then the next day the shopfloor will be as quiet as a library. The severe conditions seem to do strange things to us, we worry about how long it’s going to last and the implications it will have, but once it all melts away we wonder what all the fuss was about.

Herefordshire and Worcestershire have also been hit badly, losing £15 to £20 million in lost business, where shoppers have decided against venturing out to shopping centres and main streets. With the snow continuing to fall, even heavier in places such as Wales, this bad spell will only continue for some economies. Not only that, but airports have also had to close, spoiling many people’s Christmases, and also losing trade in the form of tourists coming to stay in places like London for the seasonal period.

Maybe we get frustrated because snow appears to be such a simple obstacle that we struggle to get past, yet every time it falls in vast quantities it grinds the country to a sudden halt. Countries like Canada and Sweden must be laughing at the UK right now, as they have to deal with much heavier snow for around six months in a row. Maybe we need to borrow some ideas from them, or even just a snow plough or three, especially if we are to have a climate similar to that of Canada’s, which is what has been predicted by 2050.

It also seems that even when we over compensate ourselves for protection against the snow, nature still prevails. Nottinghamshire County Council has just ordered 5,000 extra tonnes of grit, having already gone through three quarters of its original stockpile for the whole of winter. What’s more is that the original amount of 14,600 tonnes was actually four times the quantity that was considered sufficient to cover the snowfall expected this winter. So even if we try and play safe by arranging extra stock just for security, it just shows that we can’t, and may never, be able to properly estimate how thick and fast the snow will fall.

So will we ever be able to tackle the snow properly, so much so it doesn’t impede on our lives? The clear answer at this moment in time is a definite no, and for the foreseeable future I can’t see us being able to anticipate the snow well enough not to disturb our daily lives. Maybe one day it will happen, but for now we will possibly have to contend with sledging to work, building our next best friend out of snow, or even going camping in an igloo.

And this one time, at band camp...

Call the 1990s what you will, the decade before the new millennium, 10 years of cheesy music or even the bit before the end of the world. However, for many people, including myself, the 90s is fondly remembered for being our childhood, and what a great time the 1990s was to be a kid.

First off, we saw the rise of games consoles with the success of the NES in the 1980s fuelling more consoles to be produced by Nintendo, including the SNES and the N64. This also prompted Sony to bring out a rival, called the Playstation, and so throughout the 1990s home gaming took off. From a personal view, I never had a Nintendo console, but I spent a staggering amount of hours sitting in my Reebok Classics and Joe Bloggs t-shirt playing Spyro The Dragon, trying to defeat Ripto and his merry monsters while painstakingly collecting as many diamonds as my eyes could handle.

1998 was also another breakthrough year in gaming technology, as the release of the Gameboy Colour took the world by storm. It was the latest must-have toy for that Christmas, and with that everyone could realise their dream of being Ash Ketchum. For the rest of the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Pokemon became one of the biggest crazes amongst the gaming world. However, while I think everyone once dreamed Pikachu was actually real, I don’t think anyone would have wished a Magikarp on their worst enemy.

When I first sat down to write this article, naturally memories began to flood into my mind back from when I was growing up. Like when I fell off a cupboard trying to turn on the light consequently breaking my arm, meeting Mickey Mouse at Disneyworld, my sister pushing me into a paddling pool fully clothed or even seeing the glow in the dark Sooty show.

However, when childhood memories are discussed with friends, work colleagues or even people you met the other night, it is always the material things that seem to crop up into conversation. This is probably because more people can relate to an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch than to you falling in some stinging nettles while playing tag at school. With channels such as Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network at our disposal, what was a kid to do except watch an unhealthy amount of Dexter’s Laboratory and Kenan & Kel, not forgetting the Rugrats. Personally, I found Mojo Jojo from the Powerpuff Girls the scariest thing since Jaws. After watching the show again recently for a bit of fun, I struggled to comprehend how a monkey with his brain in what can only be described as a jam jar was rational, let alone frightening.

Anybody remember those small discs that you had to hurl at stacks of other discs? Does the word “pogs” ring any bells? Yeah that’s right, that’s the game that used to be so addictive, but now seems so pointless. In fact, when you think about it, there seems a growing trend of pointlessness amongst toys in the 1990s. Tamagotchis are another fine example, and past the furry exterior Furbys were another waste of valuable hours as a child. However silly this seems now, that was one of the best things about growing up, playing with pointless objects and games, and getting such unexpected enjoyment out of it.

I could go on endlessly about the different toys, TV shows and computer games we used to play or watch when we were younger. While our Saturday mornings always seemed pre-conditioned for SMTV:Live, everyone will have a slightly different take on their childhood. By saying that I don’t mean growing up drastically altered if you chose Charmander instead of Squirtle when you started off playing Pokemon.

The 1990s provided children an abundance of different things to keep them occupied. While this may be true of every other decade, in the 90s home entertainment broke through in the form of games consoles, and coupled with other factors I feel the 1990s were one of the most exciting decades to grow up in.

Whatever your take is on your childhood, I can guarantee that you will look back on that terrible show you used to love, or possibly disgusted with yourself for thinking that Mr Blobby would make the best role model. On the flip side, you can always think of yourself as a cool kid for wanting to hang out with the Chuckle Brothers, or even for waving round a toy lightsabre pretending you were Luke Skywalker. Anyway, enough of dwelling on the past, I’ve just remembered that my Furby is moaning at me for not watching the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with him...