CHRISTMAS GIFTS

The crescendo that is Christmas has now happened. The excitement, the parties, the cards, the visitations from families, the presents, the meat (oh the quantity of meat!) the booze, the chocolate, the Festive TV and stamina all languish slightly spent at the bottom of our once overflowing Yule tin of Celebrations like the ten mini Bounty bars that have purposely been overlooked by greedy little fingers. Our cup runneth over and we gorged ourselves and now lie back contented.

There is a reason this is only half eaten, it is
summed up in this word DISGUSTING

The beauty of this year’s Christmas lay with our daughters and the realisation that we haven’t raised greedy spoilt little brats. Like most parents we ticked off the things that had been requested of Santa and passed them around the family as helpful hints:

• Reyil* computer (no chance)
• Reyil phone (when I get an upgrade you can both have our old iPhones to use as gaming and portable music storage devices – till then – no chance)
• Moshi Monster Tree House (yes)
• Barbies (yes)
• Walkie Talkies (yes)
• Stickers (yes)
• Studio Ghibli Films (yes)
• Rare imported Studio Ghibli soft toys, specifically Totoro and Jiji (yes)

*meaning real (although we do admire the innovative 6yo spelling of reyil)

This is a Totoro, cute huh?!

There were other little treats dotted about this list and including sweets, pens, Lady Gaga t-shirts…. But, and I am sure we are not the only parents to do this, we panicked, we thought this wasn’t enough, we thought we lacked a present each for them that had the WOW factor. We wrestled with ideas, Scalextric (it was decided that this would be a gift that was more for me than them), radio controlled cars (see Scalextric), bikes (not actually needed), iPad (well not an actual iPad but a cheap tablet that would undoubtedly prove to be a false economy, get broken and cause our girls to be identified as the kids who got a cheap iPad copy amongst their friends). All ideas came crashing down making us realise that maybe they don’t need and extra something. Mrs Magill struck upon a genius idea – the Golden Ticket. A hastily created pair of tickets, board-mounted, enabling the recipient to spend up to £(insert a figure commensurate to your budget) in a London Toy Shop were fashioned.

Well if it worked for Wonka. Also, I never knew that Charlie's
day at the Wonka Factory was 1 Feb.

Come Christmas day, following the stocking opening on our bed (the girls won’t allow the Big Man to come into their room(s) at night) and breakfast in our bed, we all creep downstairs to the locked front room where one of us has to check that Santa isn’t still in the room before we enter. You see, Santa has taken on the same status as God in our house. For those that believe in him he brings joy, light and happiness in their hearts, but to meet him would technically be the end of everything.

We move stealthily into the room safe in the knowledge that he has long since departed, inspect the giant sooty foot prints on our hearth, note that milk was a wise choice of drink and that he was indeed hungry for FOUR mince pies and that his reindeer do like the apples that have rested against the extra cold bit of the fridge and thus gone a bit manky on one side. The piles of presents are spied, the girls dig in, we write down which present is from whom in the vague hope that we will get round to thank you cards this year. 



How lazy is this? an actual Santa boot print stencil.
Santa leaves his own authentic sooty hallmarks in our house.

Three quarters of the way through I ask Mrs M if I should go get the ‘things’. She very wisely says, ‘hang on, we may not need them’ (scintillating piece of dialogue, I know). This is not said through a sense of miserly parent scroogeness, it is said because our girls have genuine delight and happiness at their little hoards of gifts. This simple moment filled our hearts with pleasure and pride. In many ways this was their gift to us.

I hope they continue to have this lack of expectation and delight at the small things in life, because there are far more small things than big things, and the cumulative effect of the small things is far longer lasting and far more enriching that any thing else.

A big thing.

a small thing - I know which one I prefer.

Long may our family Christmases last like this.