There's not much that competes with Christmas in our collective desire to create the perfect day. We want kids to delight in magic and the presents they dream of, delicious food served on perfectly presented tables and happy families laughing and playing games.
In my house, as time goes on and the mantle of organising Christmas now falls very much on my shoulders rather than on the generation above, I’ve been reflecting on the parts of Christmas that really bring me and my family joy and hoping that in writing this I might try to remove some of the unnecessary pressure we all put on ourselves next time.
I love food, I love cooking and I love the tradition of Christmas food, a lot. But I always feel like I somewhat fail in making it the perfect tablescaped scene that I dream of, that we invariably don’t have a starter despite best laid plans and we almost always eat insanely late. The late meals mean there is barely any time for family games which I always want to do but the kids are too tired and there is too much kitchen sorting to do.
Next year I want to remember that the culprit for all these Christmas day downfalls is that we are probably too busy having an extra long Christmas Day walk. This year, despite our best intentions to prep everything in advance we still wound up not having time for party games or starters.
We were too busy eating festive snacks on a windy hill top and this year as I watched the kids kicking a ball around whilst I drank hot tea and ate one too many Lindor, I realised that perhaps that is our family games moment and as we all know, we can't have it all. Maybe we’ll play some games another day, but also maybe sheltering from the icy wind with our turkey sandwiches and a flask of tea on Boxing Day on the top of another Welsh hill is just in our DNA.
We all see Christmas day as an opportunity to do a longer walk we've been wanting to do - this year the walk took in letting out our friends poultry and then walking up to an old quarry with beautiful birch trees with views that stretch all the way from the edge of the Black Mountains to the peaks of Pen y Fan and the Bannau Brycheinog. A long sloping downhill back into the valley where the kids kick the ball and the dog chases the kids and the ball and then into more cosy woodland to cuddle some horses and back home. We're not walking quickly but with four children, two dogs and all their adults we were out in the fresh air for the best part of three hours. We used to walk like this as kids with my parents, endless hours out in the hills - for me I think its about feeling like you're out on an adventure with your supplies on your back. It feels very ancient to experience the landscape on a long walk and there is no better way to take in the beauty of our planet and its wildlife than by foot.
