A different Christmas

Christmas has always been about spending quality time with family and friends. For me, my friends have stayed the same for 30 plus years, so they are more family than friends. Needless to say this was, is and always will be what Christmas is about for me. It is not about how much money I can spend or how many gifts I can accumulate. When the boys arrived Christmas then became exciting because I was able to live vicariously through them and see the experience of Christmas as a child views it. There would be an atmosphere of excitement and nerves as they watch the Santa video that my Iphone app enabled me to make and their little faces would light up as they watched the video and heard Santa say their names, Christmas eve they couldn’t wait to go to sleep so they could wake up early and see what Santa had brought them. It was almost a magical time for us as a family because all the adults would almost be mesmerized watching the boys unwavering excitement.

Of course, as the boys got older their wishes for gifts got bigger and more expensive. Now, for some the cost of Christmas is irrelevant and they will spend unlimited amounts of money to please their children, then I know people who literally spend all 12 months of the year buying gifts that they save up for Christmas, I don’t have the attention span for that. Now I’m not knocking anyone for how they choose to spend their Christmas and how much or how little they spend on each other. Each to their own and I admire people who can go hard at Christmas. But as a single parent I don’t have unlimited amounts of money, like anyone else I have good months and bad months, probably more bad months than good but that’s life. I buy my children a mixture of what they need and what they want, but I have never made myself broke in the process. I buy within my budget, and sadly my boys have had to grow up learning that when you grow up in a one parent family it is always different than if you have two working parents at home. Two parents’ means that bills, clothes, food, rent and necessities are split between two wages. In a one parent family all that is covered by the wages of one person. However, they have also learned that just because our situation is different to other families, does not mean that we are less fortunate or in a position to be pitied. The reason for this, sadly there are always people worse off than you. No matter your situation, there is always someone who has it harder, sad to admit and for me it is not about comparing but about being grateful that we are in the position we are in because at this time of year we could be in the type of predicament that means we are eating beans on toast for Christmas dinner or we have no gifts under the tree……OK so I couldn’t be bothered to put a tree up this year, but you get the point.

Now I could sit around and look at the pictures people put on social media and feel as if I have let my children down, I have failed them, because the floor in our front room is not covered in gifts like some. But I feel privileged that I have been able to teach my children that demonstrating love is not by the amount of gifts we exchange but more about the coming together of everyone that you value and hold dear. That life is not about running in someone else’s race and looking at what others have in comparison to you, no it is about acknowledging that we are all different, we all lead different lives, have different amounts of money, all have different values, beliefs and expectations and yet this time of year is about coming together and sharing our love for one another. I am in my own race and that doesn’t mean that my race is less or more than yours, it is just different.

So tomorrow if you go on instagram or facebook and see something that is different to you or more than what you can achieve, don’t perceive it as a failure on your part or that you are somehow less than the person who’s post you are viewing, see it as an opportunity to acknowledge that we are all different. But different is not bad. Different is what makes us unique, interesting and imperfectly perfect. There are some who will be spending tomorrow completely alone, some who will be spending Christmas trying to find warmth on a cold, empty street, some who are separated from their loved ones. No matter whether you spent 10 pounds on your children or 1000 pounds, you have done Christmas your way and only you know what you have accomplished and overcome this year, so don’t worry about the rest of the world and what they are doing, just DO YOU as only you can do. Be thankful you are in a warm house with the people you love and who in turn love you, JUST THE WAY YOU ARE.

Merry Christmas everyone