Bah Humbug

Come Christmas time there are so many wonderful, magical things laid on for children; Christmas fairs, parties, visiting Santa, nativities, crackers, presents and treats. In our house, Rachel, despite having ripped open her own chocolate advent calendar on the first day and torn off windows for dates still to come, also gets to eat the advent chocolates of her brother and sister too. They don’t like them (its Kinnerton - yuk – not proper chocolate at all) so feed them to her instead. So already, Rachel is doing quite well out of the Christmas season.

On Wednesday, I took her to the Smallfry toddler group Chrismas party which promised a toddler participation Nativity and singing in the church, party food, an entertainer, Father Christmas and presents.

Rachel was invited to be an angel – there is some inappropriate casting for you. She loves dressing up usually, particularly in her ballet outfit, which in her wearing of it, makes her less Darcey Bussell and more Rambo.

Anyway, she refused to put the angel costume on. She just ran around in her vest, and short of chasing her round the hall as she made her getaway in the huge plastic fire truck, I was not going to win this one. I even offered her a choice of outfit, but she did not want to be a Snow Queen in the costume her friend had brought along for her either. (Come to think of it – powerful, demanding, selfish, controlling - that character sounds much more up her street.)

Never mind though, we’d just go and watch the others take part and we filed into the church with all her little friends. In the quiet before the service began she stopped in the aisle on her own, arms folded, refusing to sit down with us.

“No, Mummy. DON’T WANT TO!” (I should never have read her that Tiger and the Temper Tantrum book – it was supposed to teach how TO behave not, how NOT to)

I look around the church wondering which Mum that awful child belongs to. I am rumbled as she makes a beeline for me, really crying now. Geez, this is supposed to be fun! I scoop her up and take her to the back of the church, where one of the play leaders reassures me that is fine for her to make a noise and watch from the back. It is not, however, fine with me.

She stops crying and is slightly intrigued by the sheep masks stuck on the stable in the nativity scene at the front.

“Want see sheep!” she demands, and we creep closer to see better. We crouch and watch and sing for a bit and her friend comes and joins us at the front. I hold Hettie’s hand. Rachel notices and goes beserk with jealousy shouting “Go away, Go AWAY.” She is really not quite herself, definitely time to leave.

“Want go home” she says petulantly, and I couldn’t agree more. So bailing on my friends we slip out. After all, who am I doing all this for really? It’s all for her benefit, not mine.

Halfway home Rachel says “Want see Baby Christmas.” You are kidding me. I debate going back but on further questioning I establish that all she really wants to do is go home and watch C-chuffing-Beebies. Bah Humbug!

This whole debacle only makes our family Christmas card this year, all the more appropriate. Ben came up with the idea, but it really couldn’t be any more apt. Rachel really does live for the opportunity to watch CBeebies.  

We are getting some really lovely Christmas cards this year. Lots of them are beautifully drawn by friends’ children. All very cute depictions of snowmen and Christmas trees, and “elfs” (by our friends the Elph-icks – Ho,ho,ho.) A lot of them are done and printed through school and my children got the chance to do the same.

I, rather meanly, refused to buy my children’s designs, as sweet as they were, purely on the basis that none of the three could spell Merry Christmas correctly. No, we’d much rather dress them in silly costumes than let friends and family know just how illiterate they are.