Advent Door 7 - The Perfect Christmas

So behind today's door, there is a wonderful post from Fee about the perfect Christmas - this has really made me very homesick and ready for a good, family Christmas.

It’s official: this is the year of Christmas. Every blogger and her reindeer seems more excited this year than any other year, and we've all caught full-on, glitter-bauble, fluffy-trimmed Christmas fever. Our blogs are festive and the days are being counted: but how do we really achieve that perfect Christmas?

Okay, so a perfect Christmas is subjective. To me, perfection lays in my childhood memories: dragging my present-filled pillowcase up the stairs to my Mum’s room, resting it on the end of her bed and surrounding myself with giddy excitement and sparkling wrapping paper as I tore into what treats Santa had left me. Breakfast, dressed, the presents from under the tree and a trip to my Granny’s for the Christmas Dinner of giants. But I’m a grown-up now, and live 700 miles away from my family. Christmas has become an opportunity to create new traditions, to enjoy festivities in new ways with new people and, god help my family, to be responsible for cooking Christmas dinner.

So the first thing my perfect Christmas needs is snow. I want to sing cheesy Christmas songs as I look out of my window at a winter wonderland (see what I did there?), and nothing beats the glimmering sheen of a fresh layer of snow first thing in the morning. After curling up under a duvet to watch The Grinch (1966 version!), I want to swap gifts with my other half while playing the most embarrassingly festive songs. Christmas jumpers should not be optional.

Christmas Dinner is a military operation in my house. It begins on the 22^nd of September, when my turkey leaves the freezer, and has me working on various bits and bobs until dinner is served. Everything is arranged on a neatly scheduled list which, if I’m honest, might be one of my favourite things about Christmas time. Nothing beats a list! Christmas Dinner isn’t finished until you are suffering from a severe case of ‘the meat sweats’, and you feel so full you genuinely don’t know if you can move. And then it’s time for pudding.

Everybody’s Christmas day is different, and perfection is indefinable: what makes Christmas magical to me will probably be at the bottom of the list for most other people. But what we can all agree on is that we’re all excited this year, we’re all looking forward to giving people the gifts we've painstakingly picked for them and we’re all secretly going to be taking a peek when Santa comes in to drop off our gifts. Because Christmas Magic doesn’t fade with age: it only ever gets stronger.

I blog over at VintageFee about life, make-up and becoming a mother. Have a fantastic Christmas!