Maggie Listens

Christmas is like Groundhog Day... I have the same row with my husband every year. Help!

Dear Maggie

Every Christmas of our married life we have had exactly the same row every year.

This is how it begins. The week before Christmas I bring down all the presents I have bought for family and friends and start wrapping them at the table in the living room.

The tree is glittering with baubles. I put on a CD of Christmas carols and I ask my husband if he’d like to help me wrap the prezzies?

Within minutes he is muttering “Why have you bought so much? Why are there so many toys/ books/games/clothes/toiletries/ DVD’s? Is one thing not enough? How much did all this cost?”

I calmly explain that it’s for our own children, our parents, his brothers and sisters, the little gift for our paper boy, the teachers at our kids’ school.

“You’ve overdone it as usual” he mutters.

I explain that I gather things up slowly over a few months and I look for bargains.

But he won’t accept that. “It’s still way too much” he mutters angrily.

Then I find myself getting really annoyed. “Well I don’t expect you to do it Mr Scrooge” I say huffily.

And yes before you know it we’re well away into the familiar, traditional Christmas row and rant.

Is there anything I can do to stop it?

Maggie says

Believe me if I knew the answer to that I’d tell you. But the truth is I have been having exactly that same row with my husband for decades.

It never changes. It’s as unfailing a tradition in our house as mince pies and ginger wine.

I have lots of prezzies stashed away in cupboards and wardrobes which I have gathered up for weeks, and I really look forward to getting them wrapped in pretty Christmas paper and writing messages to family and friends. But of course Mr Scrooge doesn’t understand any of that.

He’s just thinking of the cost of it all – not the pleasure it gives to people.

By nature he’s not mean with money at all.

But somehow he sees Christmas as a time of “excess” and he hates that.

It always makes him grumpy and I end up on the receiving end of his tetchiness.

I do wish that he would change the record and actually take an interest in what I’ve bought. But this is unlikely to happen I reckon.

So this year as always I am stealing myself for our familiar Christmas cracker of a row.

We’ll say the old familiar lines no doubt.

But at the end of it all, when the job’s done and the wrapped prezzies are under the glittering tree, I will finally be able to relax and look forward to seeing family and friends enjoy their gifts. That’s what matters after all. Mr Scrooge can have his annual huff – but this is one Christmas tradition I’m not prepared to change.