Tuesday 10 December 2013

Dad's point of view on Christmas.

Dad's point of view is a new feature that I am having on my blog and I would love to hear your thoughts on it? Also if you have an idea for an upcoming topic then please get in touch and let me know.

Dad's point of view on Christmas.
My name is DJ and I am the husband of mum on a mission. I have been asked to write a post once a month on different topic's to give a dads point of view and this months topic is Christmas.
I do like Christmas but I am not obsessed with it like my wife. I find that it is far too commercialised and I also think that there is far too much pressure put on parents to buy the latest of everything and for most, it simply is not financially possible. I have found these pressures get worse as your children get older as when they are small they do not know the difference between value and branded, but as they get older they are influenced by their peers and advertising companies and the pressure to give them what they want increases tenfold. My two older girls are always coming home from school and telling us what all their friends have and it is hard to hear as I know that we can not possibly compete even if we wanted to. I say if we wanted to as I do not believe in spoiling children and it does seem to me that a lot of children nowadays get showered in money and gifts as both parents are at work and rather then spend quality time with the children they compensate with money. If I could sum up Christmas in one word it would have to be stress (closely followed by fun) as I see how stressed out Denise gets if something goes wrong. I think that money can be quite a problem at this time of year and in the past Denise and I would argue about how much was being spent or the lack of money coming in. We are now older and a bit wiser so we have learned to see things from each other's point of view and to work together to get to a point at which we are both happy so luckily there are no more Christmas related arguments between us anymore.
I am not really a Christmas planner so I tend to take a back seat in the planning of our Christmas. Denise likes to plan and shop and so on, so I am happy to be assigned tasks and let her get on with it. I am lucky that she enjoys all the Christmas preparation as if it was left to me it would be a very sorry affair! When it comes to Christmas preparation I think that one of the problems for me is that it seems like a lot of work for just one day.
If I had to pick one word to sum up what Christmas means to me, that would be family. We are not religious so we use Christmas as a time to celebrate our love for our family, as being a close family unit is something that both myself and Denise have always strived for. I like to spend Christmas day at home and we have quite a traditional Christmas playing board games and watching films and it is nice as both Denise and myself do share the same values so we never clash on things like how we will spend the day.
My three favourite things about Christmas are watching the children open their presents, helping to cook the Christmas dinner and watching the festive television programmes as a family. I also really enjoy doing the big Christmas food and drink shop as it is the only time each year that we can get all those luxuries that we normally go without so that is always fun for me.
My advice to anyone that is Christmas mad and the main organiser of their families Christmas is to chill out. Try not to put so much pressure on yourself and make sure that you actually enjoy yourself, after all it is only one day!
Even though I am not a Christmas fanatic I do enjoy Christmas every year and I thank my wife for all that she does to make each and every Christmas fantastic for us all.

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