Tenterhooks I tell you…

Everyone seems to have a Best Christmas Ever™.

Usually it involves a big house, a big table, twelve to twenty extended relatives, five arguments, three dogs, two toddlers crying, and one person quietly losing their mind in the kitchen.

We’ve done those. Plenty of them. And they were brilliant… at the time. But this year we’re going about it a little differently. And if I’m honest, I can’t wait.

We’re not going big or busy or elaborate. This year it’ll just be me, my wife, our two kids, and the dogs. What a touch.

Our daughter’s 22 and has just completed her Master’s in Environmental Science – some sort of water police slash hydroecology officer, which sounds both noble and slightly terrifying. Our son is 19 and in his final year of a business degree. They’re adults now. Wild right? Fully formed people with opinions and sarcasm by the bucketload.

And I love that.

My brothers both have young kids, and I adore them – but I’ve done my time in the all-out chaos phase. I’ve earned my stripes. I don’t need another Christmas negotiating toy-sharing treaties or stepping on Lego before breakfast.

Although we might not swerve that latter threat. The four of us* are doing a mini Secret Santa and it’s strictly Lego-based. Why, you ask…

Because Lego is elite. Lego is perfect. Except when you step on it.

* The dogs are excluded from Secret Santa 2025 largely because they lack the financial independence to shop unsupervised.

So yeah, I’m excited for this year. It’ll be nice.

I’ve had Christmases in all sorts of strange places. Once I was in Brazil – thirty-eight degrees, palm trees, sweating through festive confusion while everyone else was wearing Santa hats in flip-flops.

Yet some of the best Christmases are the ones that feel unplanned. I’m not a fan of the flurry of messages about who wants what and who’s getting who what.

All I really care about is that someone’s thought about it. Nine times out of ten, unexpected gifts are the best ones! The revelatory items and the “oh… you get me!” moments.

Christmas hits differently at different stages of life. When the kids are tiny, it’s magic through their eyes. When grandparents are still around, it’s wholesome and humbling in equal measure.

I vividly remember one year when my grandmother was still alive and the kids were very young, everyone piled into our house for all the trimmings. Very sadly, our next-door neighbour died the day before (yep, on Christmas Eve). There’s never a ‘good’ time to die, but the mood was definitely a bit heavier that year.

We sat down for Christmas dinner, and apropos of absolutely nothing, my gran piped up: “So… when are you burying your neighbour then? The dead one.”

Thanks, Gran. I’d assumed you meant the living ones.

Past Christmases have been shaped by life, death, absurdity, and squeezing four times more people around the table than can actually fit.

But this year we’re stripping it back to its glorious basics. We’re making it about us, together. (And Lego, obviously).

Sounds pretty spot on to me!