Christmas - the good ones and the bad...

When I was a child, Christmas was a thing to behold.

My Mum loved Christmas and so it was a massive thing for us. We'd be woken up by this bright white light shining in our faces. It would be Mum with her cine camera, telling us that He'd been and that it was time to get up.

It was always in the middle of the night when she got us up, she couldn't wait!

We'd go into the living room and there were always so many presents. All of our Uncles and Aunts bought us presents (that would start us off with around 10) and then presents from Mum and Dad, my brother and sisters as well as presents from family friends.

My memories of this time were of being in a loving home, surrounded by family, eating more selection boxes than enough, watching telly as a family, drinking cherryade and generally having a good time.

We were very lucky to have had all that as kids.

As I got older and my sister had here kids, I discovered that Mum was worse than I thought.

I didn't know at the time, but watched many years later, as my Mum, on Christmas Eve, couldn't wait until the next day when her Grandchildren came around, would unwrap all the toys she'd wrapped for them, play with them, and then wrap them back up! She couldn't wait.

So you would think I'd love Christmas as well with all those wonderful memories.

But I would be a liar if I said I look forward to Christmas each year. Or December as a month if I'm totally honest.

I do have mitigating reasons and one which I've alluded to before.

The years 1991 - 1996 were bad ones for me and my family. We'd lost our business and everything went downhill.

As I've said at other times, there was a period of 18 months when my wife and I lived on beans on toast pretty much every day in order to be able to feed our kids well.

And the pain I feel about their birthdays and Christmases during this period still eats away at me today, as those years should have been the best in regards to having young children.

I've never forgotten the despair I felt, looking around car boot sales to find second-hand toys and games we could afford in order for them to have presents. It was especially worse when you consider that their birthdays and Christmas were in the same month.

And even all these years later, I still feel guilty about having them in that position at the time. I completely recall seeing what other kids were getting and feeling a total let down as a parent.

In time things got better but over the years the regret over what we had to do still lingers.

I know they didn't understand the situation at the time and were always happy with their presents (and for that I'm grateful) but I always felt awful.

I was flicking through some photos recently as I was looking for photos for the boy's birthdays and came across photos from this period, and even now over 20 years later, I still feel sick when I look at them.

I really do try to enjoy this time of year, but for me, it's never easy, particularly when I see kids getting a load of money spent on them. It just reminds me of how rubbish I was as a provider for far too many years.

PS: Since I wrote this the other day, all our plans for the next week or so have been turned upside down.

I've decided that I'm not going to get wound up about it as It'll only make me feel worse. I'm going to settle in front of the telly, hunt out all my favourite DVDs, eat the good stuff and make the best of it.

I hope you can do that too.

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