Comfort and Joy

Here we are again, my friends, another year drawing to a close. That paranoid and panicky season when we feel compelled to rush out and spend money we do not have on crap we do not need.

We agonise over gifts for people we don't even like and for what? A badly spelled and grudging thank you? (By email, the ability and desire to use a pen slowly dimishes with each generation)

Add to this the current economic climate (a phrase I hate, considering I am in no position to predict or change the weather patterns) 2011 brought with it a recession, financial crisis in Europe and pay freezes across the public sector. We will have to pay more into our pensions in order to get less out and everyone working in retail will be made to feel grateful to still be employed rather than mourn the demise of the Christmas bonus.

Is it a Tesco value chicken and oven chips for dinner this year?

And yet as Christmas approaches, the footfall increases, the queues lengthen and the patient tempers fray as they have in previous years. The snow has held off another month later than last year, giving people a wild eyed look as seige mentality overtakes them. They won't be caught out this year, they will have a fridge and larder stocked to apocalyptic levels and they will trample or trolley barge anyone who comes between them and their emergency turkey.

And once again I shake my head at the madness.

We have a new addition to the family this year, a little sister for our princess who will be eleven months come Christmas and these girls, these two glorious, happy, healthy girls are all the Christmas cheer I will ever need. Their grins on Christmas morning when they open what, by today's standards,will be a modest amount of gifts will lift my spirits for the coming year.

I don't care that I've pulled the Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve shifts this year (someone has to work them) I don't care that hubby and I don't have the spare cash for gifts for each other. I wouldn't care if it was oven chips for dinner (be less washing up - don't put the idea in my head)

I am certain my Christmas will be full to the brim with joy.