The perfect Christmas for me has to be a white one - stereotypical I know, but it is the one time of year it would be so wonderful to have snow blanketing the garden and covering the roof. Christmas Eve is rounded off with a Baileys on ice after a light supper of fish. Stockings are hung up and a mince pie and brandy left out for Santa - not forgetting a treat for the reindeers. Then Christmas morning my daughter awakes (but not too early) and we have a lazy breakfast while she opens her presents. Ideally (although I have to confess we've never got round to this yet), we attend the morning church service - just to remember what it's all about. We come back and ...  Read the complete review

Christmas - baby Jesus, born in a manger in Bethlehem - it's a wonderful story and whether or not you believe it, the scene is a serene one - quiet, reflective and joyful as a family is made. So how can this be anything to do with the spending of large amounts of money which the shops and adverts cajole us into thinking is a necessary part of Christmas? Or indeed the stocking up, as many of us do, with rich foods and other goodies designed to celebrate the festive season - 26 million birds queuing up to help us in this quest. I wouldn't like to be a turkey, or a goose for that matter. So do I celebrate Christmas? Oh yes, for sure, but in a quiet ...  Read the complete review

Let me introduce my other self. I'm one of these miserable gits who finds the whole practice of Christmas a crashing bore. For me, Christmas in adulthood is a far cry from the magical tinsel glimmering in the light of a coal fire and presents around the tree long lost dream of how it was in my early childhood. With just one or two minor differences, I prefer to spend my Christmases in pretty much the same way as I spend all my other days throughout the year. Sometimes I can catch a vague glimmer of a Christmassy mood - in or around mid-November - but it usually only lasts a few minutes, then drifts away for another year. I find little appeal in ...  Read the complete review

My perfect Christmas: in the 1950s When I was a child, Christmas celebrations were SO much simpler. There wasn't much money around but that wasn't important. Three children and, later another child, and one wage-earner. We had enough money but there was none to waste. We had our dreams and hopes, which we shouted up the chimney to Father Christmas on Christmas Eve. For some reason, he never seemed to think it was a good idea to give me my own pony (we lived in the centre of Basingstoke at the time), but we were happy with what we were given. The build-up to Christmas started quite a few weeks before, when Mummy would make her own ...  Read the complete review

Christmas holds a different meaning for everyone. What Christmas is all about differs so much from person to person. We are not a religious family, but Christmas always starts for us every year when our girls perform their schools nativity. Their school always does a modern twist, one year it was the story of the Jolly Christmas Postman. There was fun and laughter all the way through, but at the end they still made the point of Christmas, with a scene with Mary, and Joseph, the three wise men,and of course, Baby Jesus. For me, my Perfect Christmas is all about celebrating and spending time with my beautiful family. We take old family traditions, ...  Read the complete review