How Just Dance saved my Christmas | Dominik Diamond
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With grown-up children scattered around the world, an inconvenient snowstorm and a vegan dinner gaffe, Christmas 2024 was looking bleak – so thank goodness for the ultimate party game. The older my kids get, the harder it is to keep them part of Christmas and the old traditions. Our youngest daughter is off travelling, which involves text message photos from Bangkok nightclubs with comments like, “Check out the size of THIS spliff, dude!” Middle son flies off to his girlfriend’s on Boxing Day. Oldest has added a festive shift of dog-sitting to her duties in the animal hospital and so she is around for just a few hours on Christmas Day. We’d also had a bit of a row on the 23rd and were not really speaking.
![[The four members of Abba toast each other over a Christmas table in 1972]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/8c884c9ca5981995f68c078a5d0317113bcc99e7/265_0_2837_1702/master/2837.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
It was going to be tough to make Christmas ’24 a memorable one. But I had a plan. And that plan was Just Dance 2025. Back in the day, I was too self-conscious to play the initial arcade incarnations of dancing games, but would marvel at those nimble athletes who strode London’s Trocadero like colossi, attracting adoring crowds with their Dance Dance Revolution skills.
Dancing Stage MegaMix was later set up on the PS2 in what I used to call my basement gym. The treadmill and bike were hardly touched, but every day I would leap around on the mat, becoming what I am sure was the greatest dancer to the Cure’s The Love Cats of the mid-2000s.
This year’s Christmas Day plan was this: nice leisurely breakfast. Prepare the bits for the show-stopping mushroom wellington I am making as a peace offering for the Vegan Dog-sitting Daughter. Pick her up. Spend 10 hours waking my teenage son. Open gifts. Surprise them with Just Dance. Finish making dinner. Clear the decks. Then dance the day away until I have to take Dog-sitting Daughter back at 8pm.
