A Stable of Playpeople

My youngest has fully recovered from his ordeal, and is now in roaring form, having slept for 36hrs and been pumped full of vitamins.

On the strength of his perky state, and in an effort to catch up with the accumulating retard, we programmed our trip to Botanic to buy the Christmas tree for last Monday evening. Braving the home-bound traffic, we ventured out en famille on this traditional quest and mooch amongst the thoroughly desirable items on sale.

The shop was quite peaceful at 6.20pm on a Monday evening, but as it shut at 7pm, we had to make sure our main purpose was fulfilled, and thus made straight for the Christmas tree section. I love the smell of real trees, and while I know it's not really a serious ecological act to buy a cut tree and chuck it after a couple of weeks, at least at Botanic I know that the trees are grown from renewable sources, and livelihoods are maintained.

The cheapest ones are the Epicea, which lose their needles at the drop of a hat unless you spray with non-ecological needle spray, but have a lovely smell, and densely packed branches. Botanic thrust them into a stand made of half chunk of trunk, and put them through a metal tunnel so they come out wrapped in nylon netting. With our tree standing proudly though tightly bound on our trolley, we trundled over to the deccies section.

There, I dream of living in a home where one can design Christmas decorations to fit in with a languid lifestyle, where money is no object, and people gasp at the style and elegance of one's creativity.

Alas and alack, I have neither the time nor the money to fritter away on decorating my child-filled abode with pricey and sophisticated baubles. However, I always buy at least one deccie to add to my collection. This year, I decided it would have to be a stable. Just the stable. The little figures that go in it cost 10.50Eur each which means that we'll have to make it a project. The boys were charged with the task of finding fitting elements from the debris in their bedroom to inhabit it for the duration of Christmas.

This is the result:
The 'baby Jesus' is a mini Lego Star Wars character who is, for the moment, lurking behind the stable awaiting his grand entrance, and around the sitting room, three Kings are making their grandiose way towards the humble birthplace.

Ulysse finds it terribly amusing to scratch at the moss and see it come away in his claws, after which, he knocks poor 'Mary' and 'Joseph' over and onto the floor, usually into the clothes basket which is ever full and awaiting attention underneath.

Christmas is coming to the Red House, however. The tree is up and decorated and twinkling, the tiny poinsettias which I also bought in Botanic have found a home on the piano and I just need to finish putting up the stairs lights, piano lights and anywhere else I can possibly fix lights to lights. I will place some presents round the tree this weekend whilst the boys are away, and hopefully finish my Christmas shopping in town.

Unless someone else falls ill....

Grumpy Old Woman

We all have our gripes about modern living, but as we get older and our experience gets wider, we have more to compare with, and thus more to gripe about. Things are never what they used to be, children today are not like we were, society is going downhill ever faster and it's a wonder, with all that rapid decline that the whole planet has not just given up and imploded with the despair of it all.

The Times recently had a most entertaining article on how to recognise if you are a grumpy old woman. While I like the idea of being able to behave outrageously and get away with it, I couldn't actually recognise myself in the list of the GOW sisterhood.

However, when it comes to Advent calendars, I am one of the grumpiest around. In my day (classic GOW introductory phrase...) Advent calendars contained images behind numbered doors. Perhaps there was part of the Christmas story on the inside of the door too, but that's as exotic as it got. These days, most Advent calendars have as much to with Advent as Winterval has with Christmas.

Here in France, a country that has not traditionally had Advent calendars, you can get Playmobil calendars with little stable characters which, once all 24 doors are open, gives you a charming farmyard scene. The question is, what has that to do with Christmas? Is there a baby Jesus in manger? Is there a farming Mary, orJoseph or are there any kings on the horizon? Er, no. What about celestial messengers? I believe I once saw an angel, but the poor thing looked so forlorn in amongst the standard Playmobil farmyard set that I'm sure it was an anomaly that would be examined with curiosity by your average kiddy. Then it would be set aside as they tried to work out what part it could play in the farming version of Bob the Builder.

The Barbie Advent calendar just defied logic. As did the Action Man one...

Then you have the ones with chocolates inside. Kids love them because behind the doors lurk cheap chocs in plastic moulds. The attraction of the calendar is thus the chocolate, not the door-opening, as if they didn't get enough chocolate on a daily basis as it is.

I succumbed, a couple of years ago, to the chocolate Advent calendar because it was the only sort available. I bought one for each boy. On Dec 1, they took them off the wall to give them a good shake to hear the chocs inside, whereupon the whole lot fell down to the bottom inside. As the images behind the plastic moulds were in cheaply printed black and white so barely visible, they were not attractive enough to build excitement with each successive day. It was a total waste of money and time.

Since then, my mother has sent me an Advent calendar because choc-free and pressie-free ones are simply impossible to find. Until this year. I was browsing around Virgin in the centre of Montpellier, and lo and behold, I came across a modest selection of picture-only calendars. I gasped. Then I bought one.

So, this year, we have two. One for the boys with lovely colour pics inside of Christmas-related images, and one for MOI with a Christmas-related picture from around the world, especially Europe, and a little paragraph explaining the custom. So, for the UK, the custom was sending Christmas cards. For Belgium, it was little biscuits in the shape of St Nicolas on the Eve of St Nicolas' Day (today).

Kids don't need chocs or pressies in Advent calendars. They'll get enough of that at Christmas. Why can't they be taught that the beauty of Advent is in the building of anticipation instead of unnecessarily ruining their sense of expectation, or hyping it to the point of hysteria? The 'have-it-now' society can't appreciate the importance of slow time or the fun of 'not having' until the much later moment of 'Christmas Day having'.

However, I do seem to have got through to my boys the pleasure of the picture, which makes me a LOT less grumpy!