Christmas morning FEAST
Family life fundamentally changes the Christmas dynamic — inevitably, you’re up before dawn and you’re lucky if no one, including yourself, has had a tantrum by 6pm. Sophie White has a new approach to it all — morning entertaining
Iwish we could all collectively calm down about Christmas, and every other holiday, for that matter. Am I the only one baffled by our illogical urge, as a society, to rile our children up to the point of hysteria for any and every occasion? I know I sound like a moan, but when you’ve got young kids, the pressure to deliver The Best Christmas Ever is just too much, and as a result, this year I’ve got the Christmas Fear instead of the Christmas Cheer.
As ever, Instagram is breathing down my Millennial Mother neck, taunting me with the kind of high-production-value Christmas-ing that I should be doing, but am just not built for.
No longer can you just bring the child to Santa at the local shopping centre, leave out a few carrots for the reindeer and call it a day. Now, you must take the children to various elaborate Christmas experiences throughout December and document it for the ’gram. Frankly, it’s exhausting.
Then, of course, there’s the day itself, which is, let’s face it, bound to be a colossal let-down for the kids after the insane build-up that we have spent weeks subjecting them to. I had vowed to buck the trend and go completely low-fi (translation: lazy) on Christmas 2019 when I cottoned on to one great perk of the Christmas Cray-Cray.
I was sitting in a cafe having lunch with my six-year-old, and he was being noticeably well-behaved. When I mentioned this fact to him, he told me very solemnly that he had to be. “Santa’s watching,” he whispered, nodding stealthily at something over my shoulder.
I turned to find he had indicated one of the establishment’s CCTV cameras installed above us. Creepy. I couldn’t get to the bottom of where he’d gleaned this idea that some Sinister Santa is watching like Big Brother, but I have to admit, given the prevalence of CCTV now, it’s proving to be really handy for keeping him in check.
In another effort to keep the Christmas madness in check,
I’ve decided to do the guts of the Christmas Day entertaining in the morning. It’s a two-pronged solution: 1) 10am feels like lunch time when very excited kids wake you up pre-5am, and 2) someone — very possibly me — will have tantrummed themselves into exhaustion by 6pm, so front-loading the day with visitors, good food and presents makes all the sense.
This brunch spread is low hassle and delicious.