We're skint at all times. It's a comforting constant in a changing world. My parents were similarly afflicted. I remember Christmas as a wonderful, magical, brilliant, inspiring, comforting time. And we got very few presents indeed. We buy dd one present from us (an alarm clock this year) and some stocking fillers. We will have a 4 month old this year too. I'm gift-wrapping my boobs.
DD adores Christmas in the same way I do. The sheer magic of story-telling, singing, baking, crafting, going on long icy walks, whispering about magic late at night, dressing up, laughing, sharing etc is what it's all about. Christmas isn't about a jolly red man (though we do tell that story as well as stories of St Nick and Baboushka and pagans and yule), it's about the world slowing down into a frosty, happy haze for a few days of the year. The whole family comes together and the same traditions are entered into with the same joy each year.
DD parcels up things each year to give to local charities, we go on local soup runs, we volunteer, dh jumps in the North Sea on boxing day to raise money for the local hospice, we visit as many people as possible and use the time off and the open roads as an excuse to get out and spend time with people we love.
I understand why you want to buy lots of gifts, I have the urge too. But you do that and Christmas contracts down to that one thing, to the story of FC and being given things. And it creates this surge of excitement and almost disappointment once it's over. Boxing Day feels a bit like it's all over and that's wrong. Boxing Day is as brilliant as Christmas Eve. The day sandwiched inbetween is fabulous yes, but the anticipation beforehand and the appreciation and continued enjoyment afterwards mark it out as a slow burning and happy time, not a day of frenzied highs and sugar crashes and overtired tantrums.
I'm a bit evangelical about it now I think. Last year my Mum was recently diagnosed with cancer on Christmas day and it cast a gloomy spell in some ways. And dd when given her Christmas wish at the table (sixpence in the pud) asked for Grandma's leg to get better. And that summed it up for me. She was 3.7yrs old and she didn't want presents or more pudding, she wanted the people who make the day special for her to continue to be around for her. Thankfully, her wish came true and this year we'll sit round my Mum's table at 2pm and thank whichever deity or luck or fate or Father Christmas for the fact that my Mum's there and well and we get to spend it with her listening to her not getting basic cracker jokes and getting cross because I won't wear a paper hat and mourning the fact that the carrots are a bit overdone. Perfect.
Our Christmas will start now. We're starting the pudding this weekend and the cake next weekend. In a few weeks we'll go and collect holly, bake some orange slices and spray some fircones to make decorations. We'll colour paperchains and make snowflakes. I'm spending the evenings while dd's in bed illustrating a Christmas story about her and her favourite bear and a magical Christmas adventure. It all costs me nothing but they're the things we'll remember and the things dd asks to do time and again.
I like presents btw. DD adores them. But they're part of the day, not the be all and end all.