Every year I say the same thing, and every year so far I’ve changed my mind at the last minute. This year will be different!
Has your Christmas been cancelled this year? I was sad to hear from a good friend that this year her usual hosting of Thanksgiving had been cancelled for family reasons. It started me thinking about why I have been continuing to hang on to the annual tradition of celebrating Christmas with family gifts, a tree, mince pies and Christmas pudding. Long ago we became a small family of only three, shrunken into a tiny remnant of once enormous turkey-filled meals, fourteen round the table, and literally hundreds of sausage rolls and mince pies prepared by a team of family women in the kitchen for days in advance. Gone.
So why continue to keep this now-outdated tradition alive? Each year it becomes sadder, as the Christmas at Kings Carols seem flat (literally) and are prerecorded, the sherry tastes like sugar-water and we can’t afford the cost of a real tree. Worse, we struggle to find suitable gifts for each other and often end up buying things no-one needs or wants, and often are sent back to Amazon in disgrace!
So, we’ve talked about it and decided enough’s enough. Yes, I’ll make a nice meal, and we’ll eat the Christmas pudding I made three years ago – it’ll be nice and mature now and it’s time it met its maker! And yes, we’ll watch the King’s Speech and try to catch a Christmas church service. If we were in England I’d be proposing a midnight mass on Christmas Eve but here in France that’s not on the menu.
And instead of gifts, I’m going to suggest that each of us makes a donation to a charity they think the other person wants to support and gives them a card on the day, with the details inside.
I know this will make me happier than receiving any physical gift (except perhaps an iPhone 18, which is definitely not on the cards this year!!)
Let me know in the comments below how you are planning to change your Christmas this year. I’d love to hear your ideas!