Ah yes, it’s another aspect of the Christmas season: parental guilt!  Delightful. Nothing says holly jolly like a hot cup of mama guilt. So grab a mug of cocoa and settle in!  Let’s take a look at all the ways I’ve felt unnecessary parental guilt this season.

1. We totally skipped going to Santa.
2. My daughter and I were half an hour late to The Nutcracker so we missed the whole opening party scene.
3. We haven’t decorated a single gingerbread man or woman.
4. Advent calendar?  Keep forgetting to do that until we wind up with several days to catch up on all in a bunch.
5. Every time my daughter asks me to spin her around the room like in The Nutcracker I stop after a minute because oof, dizzy, and also, ow, my old person back.  Mama cannot dance forever, kiddos.
6. My daughter told me she wanted a train for Christmas, and this is not happening.  She got a train last year, for starters… So deal with it, kid.

I could surely go on and on.  But my real point is this: all this STUFF about Christmas, it doesn’t really matter.

What matters is the love we share.  The silly faces we make as we wait to be let in, late, to the rest of The Nutcracker.  The hot cocoa we make after romping in the snow. And even then, THOSE things aren’t the things that matter most either; I mean, it could just as easily be a simple kiss before bedtime stories, all snuggled up warm in cozy down winter blankets and warm woolen socks.  It’s us, singing My Favorite Things (NOT A CHRISTMAS SONG, don’t @ me) in the car as we run errands, making the most mundane trip a little bit magical this time of year.

We have gifts that were thrifted, gifts that were saved for, and who knows which ones the children will love more.  We haven’t gone ice-skating, and probably won’t. We do slip and slide around the house in our socks though, and that’s arguably more fun (if not as safe for the more fragile household things).  We snuggle up together to watch Mickey’s Christmas Carol, and my husband and I say the lines before they are said on the screen, we know it so well from our own childhoods. We moan a little when the library DVD copy of it skips during the Ghost of Christmas Present’s feast, but we get on all right.

There is no perfect Christmas, is my main point here.  There will always be things to feel unnecessary guilt over, there will always be some metaphorical scratchy skips in the DVD.  

Carry on though, forward on ahead, and it’ll be alright.  Cast off your guilt like Scrooge casts off his former self.  You’re doing just great, scratches and all.