Closing the doors on the advent calendar idea

Last year my friend, who blogs as When you ARE that woman, wrote a lovely post about a book and DVD advent calendar she had made for her sons, where they had a Christmassy thing to read or watch each December evening in the run up to the big day.

I loved the idea of this and from January-March I pounced on any Christmassy reads in charity shops hoping to make my own. I got so many I thought perhaps I would make them for friends' kids too. It wasn't hard - as That woman had pointed out to me, many books you don't automatically think of as a Christmas book is actually set at Christmas - Cops and Robbers takes place on Christmas Eve, That's not my penguin might as well be and the wintry scene of The Gruffalo's Child is ripe for a North Pole interpretation.


But all this was before I knew a second one was on the way, due the week before Christmas and within days of the first one's birthday. A birthday, a birth (hopefully), Chanukah (a present a day for eight days!) and Christmas itself suddenly seems an awful lot to contend with without having to summon up enthusiasm for an extra twenty-four presents, and not just opening them but reading or watching them too.

So whilst I am looking forward to watching The Snowman and introducing my daughter to the comfort of an annual tearfest, and Father Christmas Needs a Wee tickles me despite poor rhyme and an unlovable Santa, and Brigg's Father Christmas is fit for both reading and watching, and Cops and Robbers will do me any day of the year, and I'm rather taken by Penny Ives' Mrs Christmas, and the tactile That's not my..., be it snowman, penguin or santa, still pleases us all, an organised once a day advent thing is proving a bit beyond me this year.


Of course birthdays and Christmas are immovable and Chanukah moves though is beyond my control, so this will be the case forever more,. But I still love the idea. One day I shall be brave enough to try it.

Creating vintage memories

They can't have come out that many times in the 18 years I lived at home - 18 at most it is fair to assume - but my family's Christmas cake decorations hold a special place in my heart. They are the plastic tress and reindeer and huskies and robins familiar to many of us 1970s or 1980s children.

The Christmas just gone, my mum and I invented a new tradition. She made two Christmas cakes and covered them with marzipan and my daughter and I turned up for the fun bit - to decorate them. And in a supreme act of generosity my mum went for a minimalist snowflake and penguin look and I was allowed to borrow the family decorations. Modern day snowflakes, Santa and penguins - check. Huskies - check. Reindeer - check. Trees - check. Robin - check. Metallic edible balls - check.

I hope we can repeat this every year - the three generations of us enjoying a flurry or royal icing and cheeky licks of the palette knife - but next year I won't need to borrow the decorations. I have found a wonderful website selling vintage style decorations and have just put in my order for reindeer, trees and holly.

There is something a bit silly about buying new decorations to look old. I wonder whether my daughter should be allowed to have the chubbier faced santas and cartoony model penguins that are popular in the shops now in order to create her own memories of a 21st century Christmas cake, rather than be forced to replicate my memories as her own. But any concerns I have about this disappear quickly when I think of the wonderful magical Christmas forest complete with herd of reindeer that I intend to create next year. And if she's very good then when I am making the cakes and she and her children come over to decorate them, she may just be allowed to borrow them herself.

www.cakecraftshop.co.uk

The Christmas card list

When my daughter was born, just over a week before Christmas last year, much to the amusement of family and friends it was vitally important to me to write Christmas cards and include her on them. I had our cards in my hospital bag and my parents were dispatched, the day she was born, to get me multiple copies of a picture of the baby to include in the cards and many stamps to bring back the next day. Each evening when my husband left our bedside he did so with envelopes to post.

It's not just that I wanted to share our good news, though that too, but I wanted to write our daughter's name again and again and in doing so confirm her existence. We, the three of us, wish you a merry Christmas.

This year we've become that vomit inducing family who puts a picture of our child on the front of our cards. It's a sticker of her on a swing and not a printed picture and certainly not a posed family shot but still, I make myself want to throw up. Somebody shoot me.

It's second nature to me now to write my daughter's name in cards. It's no longer new. My hormones no longer rule my actions, or not all the time anyway. But that we can do so, and sign her name, and send best wishes from us all, still feels incredibly important. It's why I think those friends we've not seen or spoken to since the last card remain on the Christmas card list and us on theirs. Not because they need to receive our card, but because we need to send them. Because the act of writing, the act of signing a name and sending it out there into the world, it proves you exist, that you're part of something, that you're still here.