Festive

Christmas is for children, goes the rhetoric. Well - they’re half right. The only time of year I miss teaching is December, after several years in a CofE primary school. Actively encouraged to make a big fuss, my £5.99 artificial tree would go up for the first of the month without fail. Handing out Christmas cards could be stretched out to 20 minutes when we should have been doing something boring like science, and the last few days would be entirely taken up with watching the Infant Nativity; suffering through the compulsory school Christmas dinner (as teacher, you’re guaranteed to get stuck next to the kid nobody else will sit by because he spits when he talks); colouring in Santa pictures; a paper snowflake production line to rival the slickest Beijing factory; and the occasional word-search to remind the kids what the alphabet looks like. (Before anyone writes in, how much work do you think gets done in the average office on Christmas Eve, huh?)

It is often said that you lose the excitement of Christmas as an adult. This is because adults’ presents are so very dull. No-one ever woke up early for a melon baller and a velour dressing gown. If I thought there was the chance of finding 50 felt-tips, a Terry’s Chocolate Orange and a Care Bear shoved into a pillowcase at the end of the bed, I'd probably still wake up at 4am!

Of course, learning the horrid truth about Father Christmas is a nasty shock that makes you question everything, from the existence of the Tooth Fairy to whether Mr Fluffy really did go to live on a special hamster farm in the country.

If you want to enjoy Christmas as much as you did when you were a kid, just do the same things. Go for a bike ride in the morning; munch your way through a Cadbury’s Selection Box; watch Mary Poppins, and weep piteously because you think your sister got more presents than you.

Merry Christmas!



(The picture below is me c. 1984. Check that out for a Christmas jumper.)