Jennifer O’Connell: Christmas in California is just not the same

I miss calling it ‘the Christmas’. My mother’s ham and cider sauce. The long, lazy joy of Stephen’s Day...

Lately, I've been feeling a bit Sliding Doors as two versions of December unfold in my head: the version I'm actually having, and the version I should be having.

In the version I should be having, I would, right about now, be panicking about the availability of a particular Lego Star Wars set in Smyth’s. I would be waiting for Ray D’Arcy to give in and play that first Christmas song. I would be approaching the pursuit of a parking spot in Dundrum with the grim determination of the Navy Seal unit deployed to hunt down Bin Laden in Pakistan.

I would be busily planning boozy dinners with friends and pub lunches with my family and getting together at some stage over the Christmas for a few scoops. “Not at all,” I’d be saying to the girl on the checkout when she eyed the towering pile of presents and wondered had I it all done now.

None of this is going to happen in the December I'm actually living out. Instead of battling the crowds in Dundrum, I'm in California, having my gifts delivered to my door with startling efficiency by Amazon Prime and Google Express. Instead of speculating endlessly about the likelihood or otherwise of a white Christmas, I'm explaining to my two older children – who have spent the past 17 months in Australia and the US, and have apparently no memory of adverse weather conditions – what hailstones look like, and what the rain cover on a pram is for.

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Don’t get me wrong. I’m not moaning. I’m happy to be here – more than happy – living on the edge of redwood-covered mountain in the California sunshine. But at this time of year, the joys of having access to a real-life Santa – although I think he prefers the title “UPS package handler” – who brings all your presents right to your door (and even takes them away again, free of charge, if you change your mind) doesn’t really make up for everything I’m missing back home. Calling it “the Christmas”, instead of “the holidays”. My mother’s ham and cider sauce on Christmas Eve. The long, lazy joy of Stephen’s Day. The mawkishly sentimental Barry’s Tea ad. Frosty mornings. Cadbury’s selection boxes. The heat of a pub fire after a cold walk on the beach. Lunch in town to celebrate getting the last of the shopping done.

We were away last year too, in Sydney, but somehow that was easier. Christmas in summer is so far removed from the real thing, it all felt like a bit of a lark. There were 13 of us, all people I love, around the table for Christmas dinner.

This year, it’s just the four of us plus our apple-cheeked newest arrival. We are beginning to build our own set of Christmas traditions in our new home, and importing as many of the old ones as we can. We’re going to drive to a Christmas tree farm next weekend and chop down our own Douglas fir, and we’ll take it from there.

It won’t be the same, but I’m learning that different is not always worse.

The health dangers of remaining seated

Depending on where you get your news, the list of possible causes of cancer includes everything from the fairly avoidable (microwave popcorn and tofu sticks) to the considerably less so (air).

The latest entry in the not-so-avoidable column is something you might be doing right now, slumped in your chair with your shoulders forward, chest concave and belly protruding like a middle-aged turtle. That’s right: merely by sitting, you are courting everything from obesity and diabetes to breast, lung and colon cancer.

Sitting, so the latest warning goes, is the new smoking; which, in turn, elevates standing to the position of the new ashtanga yoga. Standing desks, and even treadmill desks, are being embraced at companies such as Google and Facebook. Here in the US, there is a movement under way to get pupils in classrooms on their feet more.

Sitting may be the latest health scare, but it's not an entirely new one: in 1953, a study carried out on London bus drivers and conductors found that the conductors had far fewer heart attacks. Churchill was a proponent of working while standing, as were Virginia Woolf, Hemingway, and, less illustriously, Donald Rumsfeld and yours truly.

I’m writing this standing ramrod straight at my kitchen counter. It’s harder than you might imagine; whenever my attention wanders from my posture (alarmingly often, considering what I’m writing about), I find myself leaning on one hip or crossing my aching feet. By lunchtime on day one, I have given in and am perched on a stool. I’m not surprised to read that enforced standing is used as an interrogation technique.

Still, I'm encouraged back to my feet by the news that I am burning an extra 50 calories an hour, and that, if I cut my sitting time by two hours a day, I could extend my lifespan by two years, according to a 2012 study. Two years crippled by corns and bunions, but at least I'd finally get to watch all five seasons of Breaking Bad.

I try it for a week, forsaking my sofa and my office chair for standing whenever I can. Truthfully, I don’t notice much difference, other than my sorer-than-usual feet.

Does it work? Will I ever get to find out what happens to Walt and Jesse? I’ll let you know in roughly 40 years.