Embracing the early arrival of Santa

This year, I’m bringing Christmas forward for my grandchildren

“Wait a minute –  there’s a Santa in the sitting room!” The excited cry of my three-year-old grandchild had the adults rushing from the dinner table to gasp in astonishment at such a sight. There beside the fireplace, free from the confines of the closet, three weeks earlier than usual, stood Santa. It’s been a long time since Santa had to stop at this house and for many years the Christmas decorations were last-minute. This was partly due to the usual busyness of the season and a persistent year-round tendency towards procrastination for all non-urgent tasks. But, if I’m honest, it was mostly a reluctance to face the ever-expanding pile of unpruned baubles, bells and sparkly trinkets amassed over the years, and a certain weariness that came with knowing that when everything was over, I would be the one packing away those same baubles when everyone else had resumed their lives. But this year is different.

Elizabeth will be three in February, while her sister Alex is six months old, and we have been blessed to have them living with us for the past couple of months while their own home is being completed. The house is almost finished and even though I can see it from my kitchen window and will probably see my grandchildren every day after they move, I know that this time spent with us is special and precious. Opportunities for connection swirl about like confetti throughout the day. All I have to do is catch them. And it struck me that I have been dragging Christmas forward this year, gathering the magic, finding and remembering the best bits so that these children’s first memories might take hold here, in this house, where they are so utterly and truly loved, regardless of where they might find themselves over many Christmases to come.

There wasn’t a day to waste. Mid-November, long before the appearance of Santa, I found myself singing along to toddler versions of Frosty the Snowman, Jingle Bells and Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The out-of-tune piano still lends itself to halting and stumbling versions of Away in a Manger and Silent Night.

I have made peace with the long lead-in to Christmas, dispensed with self-imposed rules about the proper time to put up the tree, or light the Christmas lights, and embraced the newness of it all, grateful for this unexpected immersion in a child’s world.

For many of us, the Christmas holiday season is especially busy, both at work and at home. Because of the increased incidence of influenza recently, GPs, as well as doing our routine work, are providing emergency out-of-hours clinics and making huge efforts to promote vaccination. At home, there are additional tasks of buying presents, attending social engagements, and catching up with friends and family. There are to-do lists to complete and a constant pressure to get everything done before the close of business on Christmas Eve. Every October I tell myself that this year will be different. I will be organised. Presents will be bought and wrapped by Halloween. But this never happens.

One of the many advantages of sharing my living space with little people is that I have given up on these expectations of organisation and abandoned the to-do lists. Instead, I wrote a ‘to-don’t’ list that, like a lot of other things, I just cannot find amidst the chaos, but it went something like this:

Things I absolutely, definitely WILL NOT DO this Christmas.

1. Buy clothes for adults.

2. Deep clean the house.

3. Buy seasonal food that nobody eats, like Christmas pudding or Christmas cake.

4. Spend too long in the house (because I feel I must keep things ‘ticking along’.)

5. Buy Christmas house plants that will almost certainly die in the New Year.

6. Write a to-do list.

This evening as I sat down to read the last bedtime story of the day, I noticed that Santa had moved. He was facing out the window, sporting a pair of children’s sunglasses. “Where did Santa get the glasses?” I asked Elizabeth. “I gave them to him,” she said. “He wanted to go skiing. He was tired of making toys.” If Santa can change his pre-Christmas habits, then so can I.