Categories: uncategorized
Date: 17 December 2006 17:11:29
I'm sure that in our modern world with increasingly fragmented families that ours is not an unusal experience. Mother and daughter will be seperated on Christmas Day, daughter and father will be celebrating.
So how do you handle it? Well, there are a variety of choices and over the years - in one direction or other they have been played out in our family:
1. Presents from parent a are transported to parent b's home and the child opens everything on Christmas Day
2. Presents from parent b are opened with child a at a point before or after Christmas, whilst parent a enjoys the standard Christmas experience. Santa appears only once
3. The child has two Christmas day
4. Child starts Christmas Day with parent a and finishes it with parent b
Whilst there are pro's and con's of each way of doing it, this year we have gone for option 3. As such today has been our Christmas Day. We started it by opening a few presents which Santa had kindly delivered early & then opened our gifts from each other before going of to church for the annual Monty Python service where we were both performing in seperate sketches, (sweet that it included a dedication this year). A friend then came round to share in our Christmas lunch (a proper roast with real roast potatoes) and Third Party watched her new DVD before we settled down to watch Dr Who (yes a repeat, but it still meets the criteria).
So how do I feel about doing it this way? Well I have to say going for an early Christmas Day has really worked. The other options have tended to be rushed and somewhat half hearted - all about getting the presents opened and little else. This year has been different & I don't think Third Party is complaining about 2 proper Chrimbo's.