A Family Christmas

"What is it? What is it?” shouted the Small Girl on the morning of Christmas Eve, as she opened the second-to-last door on her chocolate advent calendar.
“Um, it’s a Christmas… tractor!” I replied, happily noting that it mattered not one bit to the Small Girl that the chocolates in her calendar (which I had purchased, in an uncharacteristic fit of fiscal restraint, at our local discount supermarket) were not Christmassy in the slightest.

But this is usual for children at Christmas; the thrill of it all is in the expectation and the finer details aren’t important. The cheap stocking-fillers are the favourites of the day; the wrapping paper is of more interest than the carefully-chosen present.

After scattering the presents from both her own and the Very Small Boy’s stockings all over our bed, The Small Girl came joyfully dashing downstairs the following morning. She headed straight for the Christmas tree, under which a sprawling mass of presents had appeared overnight. And quivering with barely contained glee, she seized the plate we had set out the previous night with a mince pie, a bottle of beer and a carrot.

“The mince pie is gone! And the beer is drunk! And… someone took a bite out of the carrot!!!” she squealed.
“It must have been Santie and Rudolph!” said DH, passing her a milky drink and carting off the empty beer bottle to put in the recycle bin.
"Was it Santie, Mummy?" The Small Girl asked me
“Of course, darling!” I replied in a tone of exaggerated shock, and winked at her.

I spent a happy morning pottering in the kitchen, cooking and setting the table while DH and the Small Girl built a fire and played with her new toys, and the Very Small Boy carefully examined the wrapping paper from his presents, turning it over in his chubby hands, his earnest little eyebrows furrowed in frowny concentration.

Christmas dinner, I later realised, is also more about the expectation than the detail. I went to far too much trouble for the four of us; making stuffing and steaming puddings and cooking bread sauce and doing interesting things with cranberries. But the Small Girl had a ball pulling all the crackers and the Very Small Boy had his first taste of turkey and in the end it didn’t matter at all that nobody liked the bread sauce or that we were all too full to eat any Christmas pudding.

Later that night, when the children were finally in bed, DH and I sat down, exhausted.

“So do you think they enjoyed their day?” I asked him.
“Of course. They loved it!” he replied.
“Well, that’s all that matters. Bloody exhausting though…” I said.
“Yeah”, he sighed wearily. “Shall we have a top-up?”
“That’s the best idea you’ve had all day darling” I said, and handed him my empty wineglass.