Planning

We have been making plans for our Christmas.

Most of our Christmas day is made up as we go along, apart from one or two traditions that we have decided are entirely non-negotiable.

The first is that nobody, at all, under any circumstances, gets up early. 

Numbers One and Two Daughters did, years ago, of course, but things changed with Lucy. Lucy was the only child I have ever met who even as a toddler, flatly declined to get out of a warm bed just for the uncertain pleasure of opening Christmas presents. 

Worse than that, when she was about four, she opted to be terrified of the whole Christmas present ritual. Instead of being thrilled about the excitingly-wrapped parcels hidden under the tree, she decided to look on them with dread. The whole thing was too surprisingly unpredictable to be tolerated. We had one embarrassing year where she refused, point blank, to open a single one.

We opened some for her and she wouldn’t look at them.

People had been kindly and generous, and our child was an ungrateful toe rag.

In the end we learned that the best thing to do was to make no fuss whatsoever, and eventually, like a wild rabbit, she crept closer and closer until the Christmas presents could be sniffed, and inspected, and finally opened, and eventually accepted and loved. 

It was January by then. 

We decided to have quiet gentle Christmases after that, and soon realised that we all liked this very much.

This restful approach has continued ever since, apart from one year when we stayed at my parents’ house, and my sister’s family, which included her young children, was there as well. 

They were up and awake, and bursting with squeaky excitement at around six in the morning, and of course once children are up on Christmas morning, nobody can stay in bed. 

It was still dark. 

We had entirely forgotten what it is like to have the usual sort of Christmas morning with children, and Mark and I had been drinking the night before. 

I don’t know who was more horrified, us or Lucy. 

We made a family pledge that we would never do that again. 

Oliver has been known to emerge at around ten, in his youth, but that has been the earliest start to the day, and even that has faded into history now. 

Half past eleven is quite soon enough.

Once we have woken up, and supplied ourselves with coffee, the children open their Christmas stockings. 

Now that Lucy has overcome her suspicion of any object disguised in elaborate wrapping paper, Christmas stockings are an annual event despite the children’s teenage status. They believe in Father Christmas with all the fervency of newly-proclaimed nuns, and counter heretical suggestions of his possible non-existence with exclamations of shock and distress. 

Only the most ruthless of parents would persist. The children know this.

Father Christmas brings books, mostly, and the occasional tin of sweets.

After that the day is open to improvisation. We do not open our Christmas presents, the sort that come under the tree, until after dinner, once the excitement of the stockings has faded away. Books and sweets are enough to make any day a good one.

We might open some a bit earlier this year, because dinner is going to be late.

In the spirit of a true holiday, we are going to have Christmas dinner at the local Indian restaurant, where they are just open as usual because they are Muslims and not particularly worried about Christmas. 

This is less than a minute’s walk away from our house, and we all like it. 

Especially I like not peeling carrots or worrying about gravy. Particularly the gravy, horrible stuff. 

We have decided that we would like to spend the afternoon watching a film, and then go to the Indian for dinner.

Deciding which film has been the topic of a great deal of discussion.

I have flatly refused to consider any kind of Japanese anime, especially anything with octopuses.

The children do not want to watch anything political or which includes long and thoughtful silences whilst people walk on Scottish beaches.

Nobody wants to watch anything with subtitles.

Mark suggested The Dam Busters. 

Oliver suggested Spider Man.

I suggested Suffragette.

Lucy suggested Deadpool.

In the end we have settled on Moana, which we haven’t seen, and maybe the Pirates of the Caribbean, or Christopher Robin. 

I am feeling very pleased about these choices. 

I can’t think of a better way to spend Christmas Day. 

Indian food and a good film.

I shall be in heaven.