Christmas
This is my last day in the office before the Christmas holidays. I’m back 6th January. Woo hoo.
This Christmas is the first one I’ve really looked forward to for many a year. I think the magic of Christmas left me at some point between 11 and 15. Certainly, I remember one Christmas where I certainly didn’t want to do the family thing, and read a new book (Eddings, IIRC) from cover to cover, not interacting with family once. The magic had certainly gone then.
This year is the first my eldest child is aware of Christmas and is excited by it. It is her third, but she was only three months old at her first and didn’t quite understand what was going on last year. Although she enjoyed opening her presents last year, she opened them one by one, playing with them as she went, without that Christmas excitement that causes you to rid off the paper, look at a present for a number of seconds before diving into the next present. Whilst you may not appreciate the present at the time, I really liked going through my collection later in the day, savouring all the presents one by one.
This year, my eldest is excited by Christmas, yet she doesn’t quite know what is going to happen Christmas day, but she loves the Christmas tree and the decorations. She’s seen Santa on a few occasions and not been scared of him as in the past. We’ve had to hide the presents, so she doesn’t open them, so no pile of presents under the tree.
It will be interesting what her reaction will be Christmas morning.