I think by now it is understood that I love Christmas. Always have, always will. Christmas is a time for looking back and appreciating what has been, looking around you and celebrating what you have and looking forward and being grateful for whatever is coming next. It’s about sharing that with whatever makes up your family.
A family is not Mum, Dad and the kiddiwinks. A family is what you make it. I was raised by my fabulous Mum and her Mum. On paper this was my family but in reality, my family was my Mum’s sister, my cousins, my Mum’s best friends. As an adult, my family is my Mum, my husband, the monkeys, my bestie and my friends.
My family has changed and adapted. This time of year I remember those who made my childhood Christmases and who are no longer here to celebrate with me. Every year I will explain how I opened my presents twice. Once upstairs with my Mum, and then again downstairs with my Nan. She was in a wheelchair and liked a lie in.
It’s the family traditions that stay with you. Each year my Mum hung a big green stocking on the wall by the door and every year my Uncle George would drop money in it and ring the bell so an angel got their wings. He loved family and Christmas. He died a while ago but I still think of him.
Uncle George was a family friend. My Mum met him and his wife, Auntie Doreen, when they were neighbours. They support my Mum through the loss of her Dad, my Nan’s many illness and the arrival of me. Mum was a single Mum in the 70’s which took guts.
When I was little I managed to pull a kettle of boiling water all over myself. The things I will do when I’m starved of attention! It was Uncle George who calmed Mum down and got us to the hospital. He and Doreen were always there in a crisis.
He worked at Fords and during the summer shut down, he’d have a week away with his family and then they would come back and take our family on day trips. We spent a week out and about. I was very badly bullied as a kid and I don’t have the fondest memories of my childhood but George and Doreen are involved in the best of them. From teaching me how to play bat and ball, failing to teach me how to ride a bike and getting me drunk on my 18th birthday, they were there.
Uncle George was a bright, loving, daft, annoying man who showed me what a father was when I didn’t have one. I have the big green stocking now and I think of him every time I see it.
Merry Christmas, Uncle George.