We are approaching what others refer to as "a grown-ups Christmas".
Our three children are all now young adults and inevitably their participation in the Festive season this year, unlike previously, is not wholly in their control.
Eldest daughter has a fast approaching deadline on her Final Year Dissertation. Younger daughter ,recently graduated from University is in full time employment. You can imagine the dismay and shock she has expressed over having to work right up to and including Christmas Eve and then straight back behind her desk for the straggling final days of the year.Who does that ? Youngest son, nearly 18 is conflicted between how to treat Christmas given that he is still wrapped up in the excruciatingly prolonged excitement but yet reserved and self restrained on the basis of his age and perceptions of how a young man should conduct himself.
The loss of ,what has become a tradition in our small family sub-unit, a pyjama day on the 27th December is a distinct possibility.
We, as parents, are however determined to perpetuate the true meaning of Christmas and we will ensure, to the best of our abilities, that this year will be no different to the nearly 23 previous celebrations in our family circle. Some things will just have to be upscaled and others downplayed a bit.
Take the traditions of Christmas Eve.
The coal fire will still be used, in its red embered stage, to send the letters to Santa up the chimney. It is just a bit more congested around the hearth with five fully grown adults. There is more of an understanding response from the children ,now older, when charred fragments of letters from previous years fall out in the fireplace on a regular basis during the year.
The stockings are still hung up but it is now a matter of debate whether this should take place before or after the older girls get back from the pub.
I am sorry to admit that the sound of sleigh bells from somewhere in the crisp winters night, between the garage and shed in the garden ,will be absent this year due to an error on my part which saw said musical instrument included in a box of random household items sold at a summer car boot sale. It appears that nostalgia does have a price after all. A bit of a steal if ever there was one.
Young adults generally go to bed more easily but on average much later than when small children. They also tend to wander about a bit more even after a Walton Family type goodnight and curfew has been imposed.
You would, on the basis of media coverage of the laid back characteristics of our younger generation expect a struggle to get them up and moving even on Christmas morning. Not our three. They are usually ferreting about in the bed-end stockings by about 4am followed by whispering and comparing notes and more furtive wanderings along the landing and down the stairs.
Under the Parenting Guidelines for the early hours of Christmas Day we pretend to be sound asleep in our own bed. The overheard conversations and joyful exchanges of our children are reward enough for the sometime travails and anxieties of bringing them up in the world.
It may still be only 5am when they come through to our room. Five on a double bed was not a challenge when the majority were small and indeed struggled to get up over the divan drawer fronts. In recent years, with the pro-rata decrease in space against the increase in the size of offspring I have harboured concerns for the integrity of the bed springs. This is even with the reassurance in the old advertising campaigns that a hippo and a duck could happily co-exist without rolling together. There are ,from our family experiences, strong grounds for a letter to the Advertising Standards Authority for misrepresentation of the ability of pocketed sprung mattresses to cope with an aggregated weight considerably less than indicated on TV. I find my lower limbs now heavily and uncomfortably constricted by arranged youngsters.
The doors to the back room remain firmly closed until there is a correct age arranged order of young adults on the stairs. These are the same stairs that never uttered a complaining creak in previous years. Anticipation in what has been deposited by Father Christmas may be temperered by a desire for a few strong black coffees and a stack of toast and Marmite by the pub revellers amongst our number.
The average size of the presents for young adults may have diminished. One year, so named the 'three bicycle Christmas' consisted of understandably large wrapped items. More recently gift sizes have assumed a disproportionate ratio of size to price. The same unscaleable mound of discarded paper still and strangely appears in the middle of the living room floor though.
Territorial issues over respective corners of the room persist and soon stacked displays of opened presents appear like a 'pop-up' shop in the High Street. Just substitute Pop Annuals and Guinness Book of Records for Banksy and Cosmo publications.
The marshalling of grown up children to a Christmas Day Church Service is so much easier but more likely to now involve two cars on size grounds. There is less of a clamour to take the current favourite toy which is a blessing on logistical grounds and in battery costs.
The return to the comforting odour of a well basted turkey roasting in the oven is quite magical and a perfect background for preparation for a sit down for the main feast. Consumption of exotic and strong alcoholic beverages have recently increased and for the first time in our family history exceeding that of orange squash and other fruit juices. Plates are piled up high whereas in the distant past the liquidiser would be in high demand for a pulped mush of turkey, veg and trimmings. After dinner, there is high demand for bottom and leg space in front of the TV. The purchase of the largest sofa that could be afforded fifteen years ago looks like a bit of a compromise on the basis of overhanging bodies and limbs.
Close your eyes and soak up the atmosphere of a typical Christmas. If this is what others have referred to under their breath as a 'grown ups Christmas' then I am not at all concrened or worried. I may even go to the pub before tea time and my daughters can buy me a pint- now that will be a first for the time of year.
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