My wife is going completely mad with the Christmas extras
Not for the first time this December, I try to prepare my breakfast as two toy elves balance precariously on the toaster. Perhaps this would be sweet and funny if we had tiny children, but ours are 12 and 14. I’m not sure they even notice the elves my wife carefully places each night and, if they do, they really don’t care.
Decorations at home are one thing, I can tolerate that. But my wife is also filling the family calendar with all kinds of festive events, as though we had two pre-schoolers to entertain, and ignoring the eye-rolling we receive from the children if they have to spend more time than is strictly necessary in our company.
I gently keep trying to remind my wife that one visit to see Santa is probably enough – my suggestions that the kids are far too old for an audience with Father Christmas received very short shrift.
I’m all for embracing festive spirit, but surely we don’t need festive movies, ice skating and the pantomime in our December diary? My wife is also making noises about a visit to the theatre to watch the Nutcracker with our daughter – who was last interested in ballet eight years ago.
To me, weekends in the December whirl are a chance to re-charge as the weekday evenings fill with Christmas drinks with clients and obligatory school concerts. I don’t want to spend a Saturday afternoon negotiating busy car parks and throngs of shoppers just to queue in a hot department store or wobbling on ice skates in the interests of “feeling Christmassy” – I feel a lot more joyful if I’m left to my own devices to relax.
Our house is now overflowing with clutter. Do we, for instance, need yet more sets of Christmas pyjamas? And I have been almost knocked over by the cost of everything. Each festive “outing” in the calendar costs over £100 and that’s before Christmas gifts, or the food shop, have been purchased.
The children are too wise to say anything, of course. Who would turn their noses up at festive hot chocolates, trips to the cinema and new Christmas jumpers? And pyjamas. And bedding. They aren’t daft and they also put their orders in for whichever extortionate advent calendar they fancy. They’ll each have a Christmas Eve box to look forward to as well, no doubt, bringing yet more stuff we don’t need into the house.
If I try to dissuade her, my wife just laughs, calls me Scrooge, and proceeds to check out her heaving festive online shopping basket.
Perhaps I do seem miserly as I object to all the added Christmas extras. She argues that we can afford it, but I think a lot of it is wasteful. I do have a sense of fun but I’m not sure we need to be spending cash on festive knitwear and all the extras which are obsolete by New Year in order to prove it.
Our kids are getting older, so I know the years of innocent awe at all the Christmas magic are fading but in my mind there’s a new phase for us to embrace. Late nights laughing as we play board games, watching classic films together, a trip to watch the football on Boxing Day and long lie-ins, for example.
Sometimes I think we’ll have adult children, and my wife will still be insistent on Christmas knitwear and booking a trip to the panto. I’ll definitely have hidden the elves by then, though.
