My Christmas excitement is now reaching fever pitch and we’ve still got over a week to go. I’m so excited I think I might burst before Christmas! I’m expecting my boys home this weekend, possibly two days late due to a train strike, but hopefully I’ll have them back for Sunday! I’m not that sure why I get so excited about Christmas, I think it’s because I like to have everybody together and I love giving presents. It’s certainly not excitement about my presents……….I know all about my one present…….I’ve bought it, wrapped it and even wrote a nice message to myself on the tag. No, in all honesty I have requested no presents as I think students in a cost of living crisis have enough to deal with and I love to give at Christmas, I can never think of what I want anyway.
However, why do children seem to instinctively know when you’ve completed your Christmas shopping and wrapped it. For the best part of a month I’ve been asking what they want. Then today, when I’ve already bought and wrapped things thinking no request was going to be forthcoming, I get the request. Fortunately one of the items I had already bought as a stocking filler…….climbing chalk. The second request I had a little laugh at………you know they’ve seriously run out of cash when they ask you for contact lenses for Christmas. Even though I’ve already bought lots of little bits and bobs to open on Christmas Day I just don’t think I’ve got the heart to leave him visually impaired at Christmas!
Now, a little story about my baubles…….the ones you hang on the tree! I love trimming the house up for Christmas. I am a bit of a collector of what my boys call ‘tacky’ Christmas decorations. However, I beg to differ and I think that most of my decorations are extremely tasteful and of good quality, apart from one that I will come onto in a minute.
Christmas to me starts with the decorating of the tree. It has to be done whilst watching the greatest ever Christmas movie, Polar Express, and eating ‘Celebration’ chocolates. Therefore, Christmas started last Friday with the transporting home of the tree, the movie and the chocolates. I love a real tree as I adore the smell of Nordmann Fir, but I always buy it from the local plant nursery as they grown their own so I know for each one that’s chopped down, another is planted and it’s only travelled as far as I’ve transported it in the car. Now this is an ordeal in itself as I have no spatial awareness. I cannot picture how big something is in relation to something else when the two aren’t side by side. I cannot tell you the number of times I have brought home a tree which I have then had to chop the top off to make it fit below the ceiling. Anyway, I really excelled this year as no decapitating of the tree was required.
Now, my baubles! I have an absolute obsession with tree baubles. I have so many and I can tell you a little story about each and every one and can remember where I got most of them from as I like to collect them on my travels. I’m quite sentimental and each one reminds me of a special person or place. They’ve sort of been added to through the years to the point that I have been banned from entering Christmas shops and buying any more as I do not have anywhere to put them. I would argue though that a girl cannot have too many baubles! I even bring baubles back from my summer holidays. One of my favourites is a tiny lace angel I bought in Dubrovnik. It was July, thirty five degrees and I was buying Christmas baubles. Every time I look at it though it reminds me of beautiful Dubrovnik. I have a lovely sun shell bauble sent over to me by my Great Auntie Betty in America for my eldest’s first Christmas twenty-two years ago and a bauble from Disneyland bought for me by my late mother-in-law. I have an owl which is nothing to do with Christmas but represents the fact that I’m a secret fan of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club (The Owls), even though I no longer go to watch them. I have various Father Christmas baubles as I just love Father Christmas! I have pretty glass baubles, sheep with wings, fluffy stars…………. and many more. Then I have my porcelain angel for the top of the tree. This I got when I bought my first house…….a one-bedroom maisonette when I first left home to work just outside London when I was twenty-two. The flat was tiny but I even managed to fit a tree in there! So, the tree is up, presents wrapped and I am so excited. So the message is…..if ever anyone moans about you buying baubles, ignore them, because baubles are like shoes, you can’t have too many, there is no such thing as too many baubles.
I will however own up to having one tacky Christmas decoration. Yes, he’s out, resplendent and fully erected in the front garden for the world to see. I bought him on purpose. There’s something pleasurable about being an embarrassment to your children as you get a bit older, it’s almost like it’s payback time. When they roll their eyes at you it’s almost like encouragement to be even more embarrassing to them. It’s like when I pick them up from the train station at the weekend all dressed up in my Christmas jumper and Father Christmas hat and they see me waving frantically to catch their attention. That look on their faces as they try and pretend that I’m not their Mum.
I have to get this decoration out before they come home though because I love to sit there silently when I pull the car around the corner onto the drive after collecting them from the train station and see the look on their face when they spot their favourite (not!) Christmas decoration sat in the front garden. My light up reindeer! He even has an unfortunately positioned electric cable coming from his underside which makes it look like he’s having a wee in the garden. But I love him!
So excited…………………..just a few last minute finishing touches to do at the weekend and then I’m ready!!