So the festive season is fully upon us, dangling blinking lights hang from every other house and the vast majority of us have paid an inappropriate amount of money for a large potted plant to sit and slowly die in the corner of our living room. However as it is the time to be merry we at least send the plant out in style by adorning it with sparkles and glitter; and in our case a vast amount of dodgy homemade decorations – placed discreetly round the back of the tree. I love my children but they get all their artistic talents from me, and mummies like me get take away when it comes to decorations.
Don’t let my grumpy start mislead you, I adore Christmas I love everything from the carols to the inevitable tantrums that descend at some point on Christmas day. I spend most of the year preparing for Christmas. I am the annoying friend who picks up presents throughout the year so December is not spent fighting wild last minute shoppers in BHS for Aunt Maud’s matching Salt and Pepper mills. He who helped create them has to physically restrain me from hanging decorations in November and the moment the calendar is turned to proudly declare December 1st my Christmas CD gets dusted off and played on a continuous loop until the big man has jumped down our Chimney.
Since having twin boy and girl we decided not to go away for Christmas again. It was a tough decision as I live two hundred miles away from my parents and brothers and nieces and he who helped created them’s family also live a hundred miles down the round, but we wanted to create our own type of Christmas and our own traditions whilst incorporating ones we grew up with. We don’t try and reinvent the wheel; our Christmas consists of being woken by the children who are itching to get downstairs to see if he has been. So far we have been lucky and our earliest wake up has been seven am; I think that may end this year…..
We open our Santa presents, stopping to play with anything the children want to, we like to savour every moment here and if we are still opening things on New Year’s Eve because of excessive playing then it has been a good Christmas! We have our Christmas walk, well we drag the children out with the dog, and I am hoping everyone will grow to love this tradition but so far it takes some bribing! Then we descend to the local pub for a little Christmas drink, not always the first of the day. In fact the first Christmas we had my in laws over I was so nervous I drank most of the bottle of champagne before midday whilst trying to cook a dinosaur sized turkey – it wasn’t my best dinner……
Home we head for an enormous dinner, crackers have to be pulled whilst Twin girl hides upstairs as she can’t stand the bangs and then we settle down for cuddles and a film, and a bit of wine! The kids head of to bed at seven and the cheese and biscuits appear and me and he who helped create them occasionally hijack the selection boxes and then we slob, happy, full and quite often pissed!
I love Christmas…
And I’d love to know your traditions let me know what makes your Christmas special…
Hmmmmm this is a hard one for me, because a lot of my personal traditions I haven’t brought over from Australia – um collecting a gum tree branch and decorating it doesn’t quite work in North Manchester!
I have started a tradition this year of making a gingerbread house every year.
And of having a toy clear out a month before Christmas to give to needy children and make way for new toys.
On the day itself its present opening, smoked salmon and croissants for breakfast, normal Christmas dinner – pterodactyl and all the trimmings
And two puds, a sliver of Christmas pud and something else more exciting – but usually cold – pavolova, semifreddo etc.
kylie that all sounds lovely xxx
Well not sure we have any yet as The Boy is only 18 months old. I’d like to go for a walk after lunch. Because he has his lunch about 1 with my parents, we tend to have presents after food. Then we have a huge buffet tea mostly consisting of cheese, pate and biscuits.
We make our own Christmas wreath and this year Alex has made our Christmas cards – this is a new tradition.
Also we HAVE to have a Sara Lee Chocolate gateau or the world will implode!
oooh i forgot i do do photocards of kids!
Our traditions are opening one present on Christmas eve, stockings in bed on the morning, smoked salmon and poached eggs for breakfast and then lots of champagne throughout the day!.. The Lad will share all our traditions bar the excessive booze. X
hmmmm now want poached egg tradition
We have a 3-day tradition starting on Xmas Eve with a party at the local pub. Santa visits and gives the kids pressies and the kids play party games while the parents get tipsy 🙂 It tires the kids out so they go straight to bed when we get back and means they don’t get up too early in the morning.
Xmas Day starts with the kids jumping up and down excitedly on our bed in fits of giggles that Santa included an orange in their stocking (it doesn’t count as a gift !) and their faces are already smeared in chocolate from the “golden coins” (apparently sugary food is an acceptable gift) and there is a trail of litter up the hallway from the stocking pressies they’ve opened.
Next we skip (yes, literally, make a line headed by Daddy and skip) down the hall to the living room for the unceremonious tearing open of the Xmas pressies. It will likely be 4 days before we see our living room carpet again !
Then it’s time to open the champers … (hubby only gets 1/3 champers, 2/3 orange juice as he has to drive to the beach for our walk) … and fruit breakfast. Then we drive to the beach for our walk, come home and skype with family (we live 200 miles away from our families), have xmas dinner. The kids go to bed whilst hubby and I veg on the sofa with plenty of booze and far too much junk food and watch xmas telly.
Boxing Day is a big party at friends house.
It’s the same 3-day routine every year but we never, ever tire of it !!
That sounds lovely Pauline, I have envy
It’s fun finding your own rituals isn’t it. We make Nigella’s Christmas decoration biscuits. They never make it to the tree, for the same reasons you outline so brilliantly above, but we wrap them up as presents for family.
I’m loving Christmas crafts this year, we’ve done salt dough, snowflakes and lots of glitter (not sure where we will be putting them!).
Lovely to hear about Christmas at yours 🙂
p.s. thanks for your vote x
Oh my word, respect to you, I keep glitter at school,,,
Great to read about your traditions and I’m laughing at the “inappropriate amount for a potted plant”!
My inlaws moved down to our town when they retired so our tradition seems to be that they come to us on Christmas Day (I’ve moved the feast to 5pm now so they don’t land on us til the afternoon now!).
The newest tradition seems to be a few rounds of Arthritic Charades, when no-one has any idea how many fingers father-in-law in holding up. Three and a half?
Oooh that made me giggle! Will think of you on christmas day!