You may not be aware, but Christmas is an interesting time in our household as we have my wife's birthday on the 24th and my son's birthday on the 30th of December. So there are quite a few presents which need to be kept out of sight, otherwise, our son will open them. It isn't always to play with what is inside. Mostly, it's because now he sees opening presents as a game. If I was his age, I would probably agree!
My son's first real awareness that Christmas was coming was our trip to Santa's grotto. He actually went to 3 in total, and the his experience seemed to improve with every different version of Santa he encountered. We were apprehensive as his first ever experience of Santa wasn't a pleasant one. Santa's temporary residency was in an outdoor tent. There were candles around him and some decorations hanging down from the roof. Unfortunately it was windy at the time which made the tent feel like we were in the middle of a seance and combined with a big guy wearing a costume saying "have you been a good boy," my son was understandably spooked. This time however he did seem less scared by Santa especially when one of his middle class replicas gave our son some Green and Black's organic chocolate. Luckily for us, he didn't see the chocolate raisins, as this is to him, what catnip is to cats. We even got a picture without having to pay an extra £5,000.
Unfortunately though, our son wasn't very well on either my wife's birthday or Christmas day. An ear and throat infection ensured we had a 'wail' of a time all day and all night. It also brought with it a certain amount of 'moisture', which seemed to end up looking like facial jewellery from his nose to his cheek . He didn't really want to open anything until 27th when he started to feel better. Then he was opening everything. Birthday presents and presents we hadn't yet given to people. Think about it though. We try to get kids excited to open their gifts and tell them they can't open others. That sounds pretty unreasonable to me and explains the many tantrums we had trying to wrestle different pairs of socks from his moist hands.
With all seriousness though, we are slightly concerned with how materialistic we make Christmas. One person giving a gift to a child might not seem like a problem, but they don't realise that 30 other people are doing the same. It can get quite tricky for family too as they can see it as you rebuffing their love and affection. So we have decided to space out his gifts and even put some in the loft for later in the year. A friend said there is a certain amount of surprise in toys that make a reappearance after their stint at the Priory for traumatised toys.
So hopefully he has been broken in for the craziness of Christmas. Let's hope he sees it as we do. A time of the year where people eat too much, drink too much and moan at each other about how much needs doing or who has or hasn't bought what ( note the tone).
