The seasonal warmth.

It's the most beautiful time .....

Bringing the lists into order and making more lists, ticking off the endless things we have given ourselves to exceed in for the 12 days of Christmas is a ritual of old. Every year we make a new list as lasts years is way out of date. One year has passed and things have changed, the Christmas card list is first to take on review, people get scrubbed off and scribbled on. We have either moved, they have or god forbid really moved if you see where l'm going with this, you don't need to reach them anymore this side of millennia. So we pick away at it and alter it and save it and then re-check it and re-add to it and reform and then re-save. The cards in their mountains pile up, Hand-deliver and To Post piles sit on the table beaming at you and you at them. 

The crucial thing now is the price of postage, oh dear. All the Christmas cheer and heartfelt warmth you had when writing the personal greetings and sealling with a kiss are blown out of the window when you tot up the cost. OUTRAGEOUS! but alas and alack you have to post them as cycling to Bromage is time consuming and that is not on your list! Trundling off to post office with the carrier bag of cards in hand feeling a Christmas spirit evolving once more as greeted with a postmaster in a Santa hat all of a sudden cost means nothing, Cheer means everything. Yes, that's it Christmas warmth and cheer.

Next up is -The food list - this is a hauntingly ghastly one to perform with gusto and a strong coffee, an outlined framework of one may sit on the PC unopened for a year but marked up a 'VERY IMPORTANT DOCUMENT!" and occasionally gets opened because we don't know what the hell it is. Whereas if we had marked it sensibly with something perhaps - "Christmas food list" we wouldn't have to keep doing that would we. Opening it we scan it, sniggering at our amazing good work from past years but then realising we have to add, adjust and again, take out items. Now, do we do the on-line shop and risk the 'When-ever' delivery time? or do we brace ourselves and hit the supermarket with bags..... Well, I have decided to go for the latter and huff and puff my round. I want to poke my sprouts, nosey at my parsnips, feel my melons and so forth so there is no other option but go for it.

If l entrusted someone else to 'go shopping' for me would they poke my sprouts and feel my melons as i expected them to be poked and felt? would they make that good choice for me? Of course not, why should they.

I have a trusted list with words added in brackets, meaning and shortenings only l know what they mean, key words for me. This makes me more efficient.

So that is two lists, l have two list. I do not have a present list though, I cannot do that, I can't follow a present list. I have tried and I have failed, I have to shop from the heart. If l see something and it reminds of someone, I buy it. Simple. A very good rule and it works well for me, taking the pressure off 'I have to get.....' 

The rule I feel of present buying is to buy someone a gift out of love. You buy it because you want to give it to them. That it a present. That is Christmas warmth.

So chin chin to all you list makers, present buyers by lists and lovers of lists, I have one thing to say to this year and that is, Try throwing away just one of those list this year and see if you can feel less stress and more Christmas warmth and cheer for yourself. After all, we list makers need love  and a little present for ourselves too you know.

       Christmas Greetings to all and to all a 

                               Goodnight.