It's Christmas Time!!!!!

December 25, 2014

It’s Christmas! Did you know? Have you seen the lights, and the painted shop windows, and the stand-in Santas? Have you taken advantage of early boxing day sales and the warmer weather and the bar tabs at end of year parties? Have you driven yourself bat-shit crazy with Christmas Carols and supermarket shopping and trying to think of a secret Santa gift for your third cousin’s girlfriend who’s visiting from Peru?

I have!!!

I’ll tell you what else I’ve done this festive season – I’ve thought long and hard about what Christmas actually means to me. I’ll tell you what, I lost my way for a few years there. I was an awkward in-between age where Christmas had lost its childhood sparkle and I was failing to see its purpose.  Enter Alice! I thought my childhood Christmases were awesome, but this being a parent thing takes celebrating to another level!

This Christmas is the first step in creating traditions that will last her whole childhood – hopefully her whole lifetime. I’m hoping to take the focus away from getting truck loads of presents and turn it toward gratitude, family, and the fostering a love for giving. Tomorrow our house will be filled with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and more presents for Alice than I care to count.
Alice has a huge, doting family so I’m hoping the traditions our little unit create around giving and receiving gifts help Alice remember gratitude and that other people in other houses may not be so lucky.

I’ve talked to Alice’s Dad a lot about how we are going to give Alice gifts in the years to come. And I’ll tell you, Facebook and Pintrest have thrown up some great ideas that Paul and I think are a great guide for buying gifts for Alice. The first is;

One thing you want, one thing you need. One thing to wear, and one thing to read.

This, along with a wee Christmas stocking filled with Christmas treats, a few toys, and a toothbrush, will be the guide for our gift giving. I could think of nothing better than Alice, older and discerning, chanting this poem as she made her Christmas wish list.

So where does that leave Santa? Originally, we thought that Santa could be the bearer of the big stuff – bikes, expensive electronic toys, the cell phone in many, MANY years to come… but then I read something that made me think twice about what the Jolly Fat Man brings for our babygirl. It can be hard to explain to an inquisitive young mind why Santa brings some children trampolines and motorbikes and other children gifts that are not so flashy and impressive, if you understand my meaning. A parent can explain differences in wealth easier that a discriminating Father Christmas.
Chances are Alice won’t ever think about Santa like this, I know I didn’t as a child. But it’s a guide for Paul and I to follow, to make sure Santa’s gifts are generic, but classic, true-blue Christmas toys. Rag dolls, metal trucks, pull toys, and musical instruments will arrive under the tree via a man in red, and Paul and I will take the credit for the big stuff that Alice spends months asking for.

Setting tradition around gifts is something I can start this year with Alice, who is not yet overly interested in presents but gets a kick out of seeing the adults around her act like crazed performing monkeys when she does something cute. Next year, we can start the tradition of decorating the tree together, the next could be baking on Christmas Eve, and then can come making gifts for family, and volunteering on Christmas Day, and making up stories about our mischievous Christmas Elf.
I think this is what I’m finding most exciting about this festive season – I’ve got years of tradition and celebrating ahead of me to help Alice discover the magic of Christmas!