Instead of stressing out about food and baking and so on at Christmas, why not let everyone chip in? A lot of get togethers of people I know, work on the basis of people combining food to make a birthday or special occasion or Christmas feast. Someone might bring dessert, another salad or a casserole or nibbles. It doesn’t matter.
If people have a special dish they like make and want to bring it, fine. We often take dessert because I’m gluten free and some people seem to think it’s a hassle making gluten free cakes and desserts. It’s not. You’ll find some ideas over on the food blog. Everything I have posted there is gluten free
Some one else I know decided to put her energies into the things she considered most important like gift buying, music programs and rehearsals for special church services. If that meant less time on other things like cooking and baking then that was okay. She did some and then instead of spending a lot of time making elaborate salads as is more the case in Australia, she’s happy to buy packaged salads from the supermarket. Because in the end it’s all about what’s most important.
I was horrified recently to hear a woman ask a young child what he wanted Santa to bring him for Christmas – ‘a plasma TV,’ he said with no doubts he would not get it. It’s a sad state of affairs when children young enough still to be caught up in the Santa myth expect major expensive presents.
‘Children today expect and get too much. When we were young we were happy with a skipping rope or a ball,’ the woman said to me later.
Children need to learn, as all of us do, that we can’t always have everything we want. Disappointment is part of life. Maybe if our children learned that early in life they wouldn’t grow up expecting always to get their own way and marriage partners to be perfect. What do you think?
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The Christmas Get Together with Family
Can Self Control Be a Bad Thing?