It’s that time of year again, when you have to decide the who, what, where, how, why and when of Christmas.
Who to invite, what to buy, where to have it, and how on earth you are going to get it all done on top of all your other work and family responsibilities.
Apart from present list, there is that other list – the not present list – of who to invite, or not.
Christmas is the time of year where family alignments must be acknowledged, which adds hugely to the stress.
If your family is like ours – divided by feuds that go back generations – this can be very distressing, especially if the feuds are not of your making.
For us, this always meant that Christmas was a very small and largely private affair, just the four of us mostly, or with our parents later or on Boxing Day, or even the week before if that wasn’t convenient for them.
This was fine when the children were small as the void could … Read the rest