I love Christmas, especially since having children, but now my kids are a little older (11, 13, 16) I find that I enjoy it more and more as we tend to ‘hunker down’ as a family. We do visits to and from our extended families before and after the 25th of December, but Christmas itself is spent rather quietly together, just the five of us. We have a great time hanging out together (the kids all make a real effort to get along!), watching films, playing games (poker was our favourite last year!), cooking and eating. As the children have got older, the gift-giving (or more accurately, the gift-receiving!) has become less important.
The build-up to Christmas is fun too; I love the mince-pies, the lights, Christmas carols, school performances, and drinks with friends. What I don’t love is the commercialism. I know it’s ‘the golden quarter’ for retail and it’s particularly important for small businesses, but as I’m watching with awe the footage on the BBC’s Blue Planet II and hearing stories in the news about plastics and microfibres being discovered in underwater species, it pains me that Christmas is an orgy of plastic, unrecyclable packaging and ‘novelty’ (useless) gifts. There are some corkers out there! How many of those so-called ‘stocking fillers’ should we more accurately call ‘land-fillers’?
Am I sounding like Ebeneezer Scrooge? Sorry! I’m not here to preach to anyone, I have been and will no doubt continue to be an offender as I get into the last-minute buying panic, but I just want to tell you about my own personal mission this year, which is to give books as much as I possibly can. Now, I am no paragon of virtue – I would be persona non grata if Santa delivered a sackful of books to my kids! – but I’m going to book-give to everyone else on my list (sorry for any spoilers, friends of mine). Books give long-lasting pleasure, they are reusable, re-giftable, and mostly recyclable. What’s not to love? I will also try not to buy from one large online retailer of books – yes, there is usually a discount and it’s an expensive time of year, but bookshops often have lots of offers this time of year too. Independent bookshops need our business; use ’em or lose ’em, our town centres and communities will be much poorer without them. There are two brilliant ones in my locale – the Chorlton Bookshop and the Urmston Bookshop. And if your funds are limited, secondhand books are very acceptable gifts, especially when you chuck in a bar of Fairtrade chocolate! (Oh and books are really easy to wrap.)
So, I’d just like to leave you with this thought – BUY BOOKS THIS CHRISTMAS! It’s also UK Small Business Saturday on 2 December, so you can add to that KEEP IT LOCAL.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be letting you know how I’ve got on and posting my suggestions for books to look out for which will make great gifts.
GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR CHRISTMAS SHOPPING!
What do you think about giving books for Christmas?
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