Christmas: the traditions, the habits and the toys

Posted on Oct 25, 2010 in General stuff | 2 comments

Ohhhhhh, I LOVE Christmas! What could represent being a child more so than Christmas?

Out and about over the weekend we noticed a lot of the shops have their Christmas ‘stuff” in store now.  Now that the weather is so chilly and damp, and the thought of sunshine and my tan seems moons away from here, I am totally wrapping myself up in Christmas.  Although, I do every year.

Traditions from my Mum have become my passion and not more so than Christmas traditions.  My tree goes up on the 1st December, just like my Mum used to and the rest of the house slowly follows.  My newest tradition however is my fairy lights, inspired by Nigella Lawson and her endearing use of lights in her kitchen.  It makes you feel like your cooking in a wonderland every time you get the saucepans out.  I love the kitchsness of Christmas, I love the traditions of Christmas and I just can’t get enough of the looks on Pickles face with all the colours that surround us for those 4 to 6 weeks.

But this year, I have a problem!

What on earth am I going to buy for Pickles this year?  There is so much choice, an overwhelming amount in fact yet I still haven’t’ felt that, ‘oh she will love this’ feeling, or that feeling that my money is buying something that will inspire her, give her hours of fun, and enchant her.  Or is it just that at her age her attention span is so short that no toy would really do?  I am not flooded with money as much as I would like to be so putting a limit on spending is important this year and I want to ensure I get things she will enjoy, for more than two days!

The myriad of toys in the shops is so confusing.  Barbie, dogs, things that beep, things that sing. There is even an electronic pen that reads them a story.  It seems that once your child is over 6 months, they assume that everything has to run with batteries.  What happened to all those wonderful wooden toys, the homemade stuffed toys, the dollies, the little musical instruments and the beautiful dress-up clothes. I don’t want to teach Pickles at almost three that to entertain herself she must have an equally noisy responding machine to do it.  I believe passionately in Creative play, in Imaginative play and now, between the age of 2 to 3, their development is hungry for it.

At this age, their senses are going into overdrive, learning, taking in so much information and now is when those little habits we don’t even consider we’re creating, are being made.  Like the one Pickles alerted me to yesterday…  After a few weeks of coming downstairs in the morning and putting on the TV so that I can blearily make a cuppa tea and get her breakfast on, all hell broke loose.  This morning, SKY wasn’t working…her TV couldn’t go on…no Shaun The Sheep, no Timmy Time, no BabyTV…you can imagine the flurry she got herself in.  “My TV”, “Mummy I want Shaun The Sheep please!!!” she said with the most pleading tone.

“It’s not working” I said with all the tenderness in the world knowing that she just couldn’t comprehend why she couldn’t watch it.  And then, the tantrum.

My morning cuppa tea was surrounded by a little screech of confusion blurting out “Shaun The Sheep” every so often amongst other indistinguishable words.  It took some minutes of empathy and tenderness to help her understand that the TV wasn’t working “no power” I exclaimed, “just like Pepper Pig” (a show we had watched recently where the power goes out in Peppers house) and more to the point distract her with toys instead.  So here we were, a new habit formed.  After a short time of repeatedly watching it on arriving downstairs in the morning, to her, it became ‘what she does’ and she couldn’t understand why it suddenly wasn’t there.

So now I think forward to Christmas and consider the habits I want to form, the traditions I want to keep or create and of course, what to buy Pickles from Santa Claus.  I can assure you, nothing I am considering, be it the traditions or the toys… has batteries.  I want Pickles to learn the beauty in other things and of course, keep teaching her how to amuse herself without the need for constant noisy responses from ‘machines.’

Happy lead up to Christmas everybody!

Cheers