It’s not that I’m not tempted.
The thought of getting up and opening presents without even looking at the clock makes me smile. The idea of staying in our pj’s all day long and reading a book with a glass of wine in hand while the kids play with their new toys seems like heaven to me.
I would love to have a Christmas day tucked snugly in home; just my kids, my husband, my dog and myself.
But that’s not going to happen.
Instead, my home will be filled with people who love us.
My kids will wake me up on Christmas morning before the sun has even opened her eyes. I will watch them open their gifts and ooh and ahh and revel in their excitement.
We will enjoy a wonderful Christmas breakfast with bacon and pancakes and oh so much coffee.
I will pop the turkey in and take a nice long shower.
Then my house will fill itself with the people who mean the most to us.
They will tear through the door with arms full of presents.
We will open each other’s gifts and while my kids play with their toys we will spend time together as the house fills with the warm smell of Christmas dinner.
We will watch movies, eat food and just be together.
Our Christmas traditions have changed since we had kids. We no longer spend Christmas day driving from one family’s house to the next. We made the decision early on that our kids would spend Christmas morning in their own house and we have stuck to that. We alternate years so that we spend Christmas day with one side of our family one year and the other side the next year.
We have done our best to minimize the chaos for both us and our kids.
But I won’t cut my family out of that.
Some years we will celebrate on Christmas day and other years we make another day special, be it Boxing Day or New Year’s Eve, but we will always celebrate Christmas with our family.
Our life is chaos. With two working parents we don’t have a lot of free time and the weeks leading up to the holidays are particularly full of obligations.
But Christmas is all about family.
All year round my family offers us love, guidance and support. Christmas is the time of year that we celebrate each other.
On Christmas day, as I finally sit down to a beautiful turkey dinner, a little exhausted but full of love, I will look around the table and feel thankful that my life has been blessed with so many wonderful people.
