Keeping with tradition, have you been to a Christmas Carol Concert yet? our annual concert held in the village square, by candle light, beside the enourmous christmas tree takes place this week. I must admit its superb. Everyone gets in the spirit and enjoys some christmas cheer! Along with this my family feel it just isn’t christmas with out a evening at our local theatre enjoying abit of slap and tickle humour of our local christmas pantomine. We all enjoy it, the theatre group always manage to get full audience participation and you can’t resist to join in, can you? with something for every age catered for.

Well I thought I would tell you a marvellous tale of culinery delights, which made our christmas that extra special one year!

This is one of those moments our family always recalls and it always brings a smile.  Christmas Eve in our house is manic the family decends on our little house to become full to the brim, its great to get everyone together. Its a bit of a family tradition that I have tried to continue. My grandmother being one of a number of children with her own 6 children would host Christmas. I remember them fondly as a child we would all be there and we all helped, cooked and enjoyed ourselves, she truely kept the family spirit alive. I do the same with my sisters and their families join us, aswell as my children and their families and other friends and family. Its a case of all of us joining in. The games become very competitive as it did on this particular year. We decided to have a competition between the women and the men to make the best mince pies. What fun we had, against the clock each groups representatives set about their task supported by the others. All the little children had by now become very tied and including my daughter Emma, had retired to a bed in one of my back bedrooms. Away from the noise we were all making, while all the fun continued downstairs. What a mess we had made of the kitchen and abit of a food fight broke out. I have to say on this occassion the girls had the edge just, and we laughed so much. Everyone recalls it. It got very late as we tossed a coin for who was going to chew rudolf’s carrot, (so carefully placed with a mince pie for santa and a shot of sherry too by the children earlier). Mark drew the short straw and set about creating the plate to look like santa had called for the children.

We tried between us to clear up the mess we had all made and after all feeling rather merry, and the christmas dinner well in hand we retired to our beds. It was abit like the waltons on TV taking 30 minutes for all of us to say good night to each other and also trying to bring quietly, (which is no mean feat) a sack of presents for each child to be placed at the foot of their beds and sleeping bags.

At last a huss decended on the house at some unearthly hour of the morning. Then the screams and shouts of children and one particular high pitched squeal of my little 6 year old daughter at the time Emma could be heard above all else. To the extreme we thought something was wrong and all ran to her aid. As we gathered around the christmas tree in our front room there was one little girl whose smile was so big it filled her face, when we asked what on earth was wrong it was amazing:

It wasn’t the huge sack of presents which were still by her bed, but she was stood by santa’s plate which had all been eatten (as we know by mark earlier). But, it was something else, as she pointed down to the floor, “Look!”, she screamed “its really santa, he’s really been look at his snowy footprints”.  It was one of those moment’s to cherish, as all the children looked down and gasped in amazement at what they thought were santa’s snowy footprints. While all of the adults giggled as we realised in all the fun and games and mayhem of christmas eve, we had all walked floury footprints around the house and Mark had taken them straight to Santa’s plate. None of the children realised there was no snow outside, they just all knew he had really been!

It was marvellous for something so simple had made a christmas so very special and we all remember this particlaur christmas with great fondness even now!

Whats you great christmas moment? Let me know, can you beat this one?