Xmas, Santa and Festive Frollocking?!

Oh it’s that time of year again! Or haven’t you noticed? Impossible! Even worms that are banging their heads against frozen rocks of clay must be able to smell the synthetic tinsel and fake fur trees.

It’s not that I don’t like Christmas, I really love the festive Season, but…you know what’s coming don’t you? Too much too early…the over commercialisation of it…the financial pressure and the concept of Christmas; family reunion and good will, is lost in materialism.

Every onset of Winter, every year, the same thing happens to us all. As soon as Halloween is over, the pumpkins and scary masks are replaced with tinsel and baubles. There is no time in the retail world of advertisements and promotions to allow any deals on essential household goods. The great pound shops and bargain shops cease to sell birthday cards and paper, there are no promotions on washing powder or shampoo and no chance at all of picking up any reduced biscuits to help build up a healthy layer of fat to keep us warm when heating is now a luxury not a necessity! The Christmas goodies take over the shelves and ploughing through it all for six weeks or more wears the whole Christmas season out.

Most people will agree with me that the only way to avoid it is to isolate yourself, try to avoid any High Street or theme tuned shops, and immerse yourself in self wallowing denial.

But there comes a day when we have to venture out and do our best to make it happen. I am really irritated by people who get it all finished weeks or months before the big day. Every year I try to put some money aside, but then an unexpected ‘thing’ is lost or broken, and my Christmas pennies are spent faster than they are saved. So my irritation with people who can manage to be ready well in advance probably points to envious pangs of better money management and organisation. Maybe next year I will be more successful?;)

A brilliant blogger known as Stressy Mummy wrote a blog, that I read this morning, which prompted me to have a rant. She comments on a parent in the school playground telling her “… You just need the Christmas fairy to come and sprinkle some magic dust on you, and you’ll be away!”

I mean how patronising is that!? We all have different financial commitments and some of us have more children that others. When your money is tight, and you live on a budget, you need a lot more than ‘magic dust’ to make Santa arrive!

So I am not the only one who appears to be a humbug to others. Overhearing several Mum’s chatting about going out for the day shopping and organising it all the other day, I sourly laughed and said that I would be raiding the charity shop in the village. Gosh what a miserable Mum I am!

With three children of my own and an older step son, I do feel the pressure of granting them their wishes. They are all very good children and do deserve some, at least, of their wish list. I had a dream last night about an argument with the children’s father about presents, and after scanning Ebay late last night for a DS my son, who had snuck into my bed unnoticed, woke me uttering “Can I have a DS for Christmas Mum? Any colour, I don’t really mind.”

Had he just crawled into my brain in the night and planted a seed!? There was no link I could think of that connected us both to the same thinking, Christmas hadn’t been mentioned. Clever they are children, aren’t they?

My Christmas’s usually consist of  very last minute panic shopping, when my lovely partner magic’s some extra cash from somewhere..and we make it all happen with frantic enthusiasm, Seasonal snow as we embrace the moment, and allow the Festive Frollocking to Ferment! Ho Ho Ho!

It just takes us a little longer to get into the mood, and of course once I have all the shopping done, I too am festive and joyous, and up till 3 or 4am Christmas Eve wrapping, trying to beat the sounds of Santa’s Sleigh Bells!