Generation Gap

The Family Christmas By Rachael Crofts

I am turning into my mother. Frightening though the concept is, I cannot ignore it. How do I know this? I know because I now do my Christmas shopping in August and buy my cards in the January sales. With the big day almost upon us I have not one present left to buy - I've even got a couple of spares lest anyone should arrive with an unexpected gift - and just how mother-like is that, the otherhalf points out.

I have rolls of paper, sellotape, shiny bows and ribbon - all colour co-ordinated. The cards are written and posted, and the decorations ready to go up. The notes for Father Christmas have been composed and sent up the chimney, and as long as no one changes their mind at the last minute, Santa should be okay. I have become the sort of over-organised anal retentive I used to despise. This year we have eleven to dinner, the parents, the out-laws, an aunt and uncle, us and the kids - including our new arrival, baby Rosalind Elizabeth.

I shall be up at six to put the bird in the oven - having resisted the age-old family compulsion of ordering a turkey so large it needs cooking from 3am. I'll have a couple of hours off to open the pressies with the kids and go to church before following Delia Smith's Christmas dinner countdown. Now I know Ms Smith gets on some people's nerves and that whole series about how to boil a kettle was a little patronising to say the least, but when it comes to Christmas, Delia's my saviour.

"The waste cardboard alone could restore part of the Amazon rain forest."

This year's festive feast will include smoked salmon blinis with creme fraiche, (melon cocktail for the non-fish eaters - there's always at least one), followed by turkey, roast potatoes, parmesan parsnips, brussels sprouts with bacon and chesnuts and red cabbage with cranberries. I don't do puddings, leaving that to the aforementioned aunt, and the fatherin- law usually provides the wine. After cheese and port everyone over the age of five falls asleep, though most slumbering is constantly interrupted by the words, ‘can you put the batteries in this' or ‘oops this seems to have broken'.

The house will resemble a Toys`R'Us franchise, and the waste cardboard alone could restore part of the Amazon rain forest. One of those annoying plastic encased wire twisted tags used to keep toys in boxes will puncture the leather suite, and the list of who bought what for the thank-you notes will go astray. Everyone will stagger off home uncomfortably full by around 8pm and the kids will have exhausted themselves (hopefully) and be in bed by 8.30pm, leaving myself and the other-half alone in a sea of noisy plastic. At this point we usually give each other our gifts, but this year we've decided against buying for each other. No, not out of meanness or as a result of my husband's embarassing experience in a jewellery shop last year - it's a long story, but he basically chose a man's bracelet for me instead of the Tiffany inspired one I had selected and was then convinced the jeweller thought he was gay...

No, this year, in an attempt to recreate the true meaning of Christmas we have sent the money we would have spent on each other to the charity World Vision, through whom we sponsor a little boy in Malawi. Five-year-old Lonzejo Mandawala will be celebrating Christmas the same as us, though I'm sure without a hundred weight of plastic. Hopefully our gift to him and his community, small though it is, will be used in one of the many projects World Vision runs to improve conditions for the village.

And for us and our kids, in our middle-class comfort zone, it will remind us that there's more to Christmas than a huge turkey and a Barbie guitar.