I have a confession to make:  Part of me would quite like to cancel Christmas this year.

I’m just not feeling it.

I’ve tried so hard to get in the spirit of things.  We normally put up our Christmas decorations on the 8th December – the day after my daughter’s birthday.  This year we left it until the 13th.

As per our family tradition we donned Santa hats and festive headbands, balanced silly glasses at the ends of our noses and danced around to Christmas music played at top volume… and even that didn’t get me in the mood.

I wrote my Christmas cards on the 17th December – a good two weeks later than usual.  We’ve visited Santa, been ice skating, decorated a gingerbread house and watched Christmas films.  I’ve attended nativity plays, wrapped (some) presents, downloaded Michael Buble onto my ipod and have done the dreaded Christmas food shopping.  Last weekend we had a mini-Christmas with Sophie and another with my Mum.

Still nothing.

I can’t figure out if it’s the unseasonably mild weather, having an extraordinarily busy December that has left me with no headspace for anything other than living moment to moment, or simply being aware that it’s the first Christmas that my Dad won’t be calling me to shout “Merry Christmas Bunny!” cheerfully down the phone.  In truth, it’s probably a combination of all three.

Today is my last day of clients and, understandably, Christmas has been the main topic of conversation – it’s often a difficult time of year for those struggling with eating disorders or anything else that means they aren’t quite at full wellness – physically, mentally or emotionally.  We’ve talked about expectations for the day, doing the best we can with what we’ve got and recognising that it’s ok if some things are less than perfect.  And, as so often happens, I’ve realised that I need to take on board these exact things.

I’ve been stressing so much about finding the perfect presents for people, about getting everything done in time and about making every ‘Christmas experience’ as magical as possible, that I let myself get totally overwhelmed and completely forgot to have fun along the way.  And as a result I stopped everyone else having fun too.

Yesterday my middle daughter asked me to play Lego with her.  Normally I would say no, that I had too much to do and couldn’t she ask one of her sisters to play instead? But something stopped me, and I got down on the floor with her and together we built a rather epic Lego castle.  The joy on her face was wonderful and it reminded me that (despite what the media tell us), Christmas is about spending time with those you love.  It doesn’t matter if the presents aren’t perfectly wrapped.  It doesn’t matter if you forget to buy bread sauce.  It doesn’t matter if the cards get sent after the last posting date.  It doesn’t even matter if the icing on the gingerbread house falls off (“It doesn’t have to be perfect Mummy, it looks good enough to me”)

For me this Christmas is going to be about making sure there is enough…

…Enough love shown to those that matter most.

…Enough gratitude felt in our hearts for how lucky we are to have the people we do in our lives.

…Enough time to spend having fun doing the things we love to do together.

…Enough presence and connection with each other.

After finishing with my clients today I’ll get home at about 9pm, having been up since 4am this morning.  Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and I still have a ton of stuff to do.  No doubt some of it will be left incomplete.  And I’m starting to realise that it won’t matter one little bit.  Because once the girls are tucked up in bed and Santa’s mince pie & milk and Rudolph’s carrot have been dutifully left out for the eagerly anticipated visitors, I’ll spend the evening wrapping the last of their presents whilst watching Love Actually (my favourite Christmas film), waiting for my husband to finish work at midnight before falling into bed knowing that whatever Christmas Day brings, it will be enough.

Maybe we don’t need to cancel Christmas after all… I think I’m starting to feel a little bit festive 🙂