Happy Christmas

Written many years ago.

The words “getting ready for Christmas” conjure up excitement and the thrill of taking part in family re-union and going to church to midnight mass and carol services.

There is the nursery-school nativity play to anticipate, where we can come and watch you taking your part as a shepherd. Your Grandma made you a shepherd’s cloak and hood of many colours. We went with you to the church near your school to see you with infant angels and animals and Joseph and Mary and, believe it or not, a real baby who took the part of Jesus.

There were all the proud parents with their cameras, and the teachers gathering the children round them. And there was you, sitting on your Grandma’s lap, refusing not only not to be dressed as a shepherd, but in fact to have nothing to do with the proceedings whatsoever.

No-one really knows what goes on in a little boy’s mind at such moments. I like to think you were clever enough not to want to go through life being a shepherd and there was no point in starting off as one in the first place!

Stringing up the decorations, when you havefound them, is somewhat easier - well, almost. You will need a box of drawing-pins and a step­ladder.

Drawing-pins are designed either to slip out of your hands at the crucial moment of pinning them to the ceiling, or to bend in half when you push them into the ceiling. After a few years the ceiling has enough holes to enable you to know where the drawing-pins fit. The only trouble here is that when you push drawing-pins into existing holes they fall out again. Step-ladders are designed never to reach the corner you want to get into. You can find dropped drawing-pins by kneeling on them, putting your hand on them, or standing on them.

We still look forward to the day itself. Opening presents is exciting for all of us. That you will probably spend much of the time playing with the boxes and the wrapping is of little consequence. It is the fact we are all together that is important.

The sceptics may say this is not what Christmas is about.  But they forget how Jesus came to be born in Bethlehem.  Even this is only of importance if you remember that your family is something worth having and being part of. Opening presents is finding kindness from others who tried to discover what it is that would make you happy.

Your mother gave me a book for Christmas.  It is entitled “The History Of The Family - A Record Book”. 

May I offer you a small piece of advice.  Do not give presents that entail the recipient in work - especially if that work is of an impossible nature. 

Contained in this book is a blank family tree which, when completed, allows you to trace the history of your parents, grandparents, great grandparents and great great grandparents.  Whoever designed this book is either extremely naive, or has the only family in history where children were all born in wedlock and where everyone was as pure as the driven snow.

In most families snow may have been thin on the ground at times!

One day, when all the golf courses in the world have been closed, I may have time to fill in the book. Until then, I will tell you as much about our family as I know, or rather, as much as is proper for you to know.

You can draw your own tree.      Happy Christmas.

P.S.In a previous post I wrote about Peter Fletcher. I thought

you might like to see him.                                                               Here he is: