Presents and Presence

So Christmas time. We’re home at the ancestral babycrow nest with my parents for a few days. Veggies have been peeled and chopped and glasses polished to make things easier tomorrow, and we’re now just settling in for a quiet evening of chatting and catching up, with Champagne accompaniment.

The presents are wrapped and underneath the tree (and the overspill next to the tree!). I hope I’ve got some of  the gifts right, I hope they’ll delight the recipients. For Hubby and me Christmas Day will be the final culmination of our advent-long exchange of gifts to one another (I wrote about this a while ago). Our advent gifts were not always the wrapped-up type, often they were simple notes that conveyed a loving thought, recalled a shared memory, sometimes a promise of effort in something we felt we might have been falling short. This was our first year of such daily exchanges and we both really loved it. In a season that can get commercialised all too easily, this simple recognition of the value of one another was really touching.

So when I give my gifts to my family tomorrow in my heart I will be committing also to being present for them over the holiday period. I’ll be doing my best to offer everything that I have — not the bit of stuff under the paper and the ribbons, but the love, attention, and patience I can give so that this will be a Christmas I remember fully — and for the right reasons. Memorable not for what I was given, but for what I truly gave to those who mean the most in the world to me.

Oh yes, we’ve had a few family dramas already, but I’m trying to see these not as a battle of wills or personalities, but as opportunities to negotiate, to be graceful, and to offer my love. My Christmas is not a solitary experience, and I’m grateful for that.

Happy holidays! xx