A Christmas Carol: Daddy Edition

By Joe Barker

I loved Christmas as a child and although some of the magic has faded with age, I still love the festive season. I was confident that the addition of a small child could only increase my yuletide joy. Not that this is the only reason I had a child; obviously that would have been deeply irresponsible. There were also the exciting opportunities to play childhood games, eat children’s snacks, and countless other excellent, and highly responsible, reasons for procreating.

Christmas present

So far, Marty has proven a great disappointment at Christmas. At six months, he showed a vague interest in chewing some baubles and wrapping paper, and we got some photos of him with the Christmas tree and with Santa. But where was the Christmas magic? The growing excitement as the day approached? Singing carols and eating mince pies together, waking up at the crack of dawn to open stockings and then spending the day building Lego together on a continual, chocolate-induced sugar high? He gave us none of this. Perhaps I was expecting too much of a baby? In his defense, he did wake us at the crack of dawn, but I suspect that wasn’t because of Christmas Day excitement.

For his second Christmas, I brought several old Advent calendars out of storage and spent a happy December counting down the days to the main event. The traditional Christmas Eve rush around the shops to impulse buy the gifts for my wife and son that I should have planned days, if not weeks, in advance, was as much fun as ever. Incidentally, having set the bar incredibly low over a number of years, I basically haven’t ruined Christmas as long as I remember to buy my wife a box of chocolates. 

Naturally, Marty was still too young to fully appreciate the Advent calendars, although he chewed a couple of them in a markedly festive manner. He also showed more interest in the tree than we really wanted: like a magpie, he slowly collected the shiniest baubles and hid them around the house, until only the top branches were decorated. While he did, once again, provide the early start which is such a critical part of Christmas morning, he still wasn’t really getting into the excitement of the day. 

This year, I think we might start to get a proper Christmas. At 30 months, he will definitely be excited by Christmas chocolates and cakes. The Christmas tree will be in a continual state of undress and the wrapping paper a source of fascination. I think he will also show some interest in his gifts. There may even be something at the hotel buffet brunch that he will be prepared to eat!

With this in mind, I think it's time to start planning what kind of family Christmas traditions we want. In planning for our future Christmases, it is probably best to start by looking at Christmases past to see which traditions we want to keep.

Christmas past

My wife and I had very different Christmases as children. I grew up in rural England with lots of brothers and sisters, so Christmas involved lots of family activities. There were open fires, warming foods and, on one or two memorable occasions, snow. By contrast, my wife grew up in Bangkok as an only child. Apparently it never snowed, and they rarely needed to light the fire. Sounds awful, so let's focus on me instead.

Stockings were an essential part of Christmas, with Santa stuffing an old football sock with apples and satsumas, chocolate, and gifts. The first magical hours of Christmas—around 4 or 5am—would be spent comparing our goodies and stuffing ourselves with chocolate. It was then time to wake our parents and show them all the noisy and exciting things Santa had brought us, which at 6am I’m sure they were delighted about. Then it was time to get down to the serious business of the day: eating. 

Ironically, given what is about to follow, one Christmas tradition that I am determined to lose is the Christmas walk. Having stuffed ourselves with turkey and potatoes, we would be just ready to play with our new toys when our parents would insist on a vigorous walk. A loathsome experience that I never wish to revisit. 

So afternoon walks are out, but Christmas parkruns are in! I loved our 5 km run at 9am on Christmas morning. The runners and volunteers, no matter how tired and hungover they were at the start, would all be in a good mood by the end of the run, feeling smug for being awake and running when the rest of the country was fast asleep. Sometimes there was carol singing, and there was always champagne and mince pies and a great helping of festive cheer! The perfect way to work off some of the early morning chocolate and build an appetite for the heavy eating that was to come later in the day.
 

Christmas future

So what Christmas traditions do I want Marty to have, and what am I going to do this year to start those traditions? You will obviously have your own family traditions and may look with horror at some of the things I intend to inflict on my unfortunate family—most likely the running.

Advent calendars are definitely in, and nearly as important as the Advent calendar is Advent running. This is something I do with a group of friends on Facebook, and we encourage each other to do at least 30 minutes of exercise every day of Advent. In some years, I've done yoga or cycled to work rather than running every day, while one memorably exhausting and hopefully never to be repeated year, I ran 1 km on December 1st through to 24 km on December 24th. Not running was definitely the most exciting part of Christmas Day that year! Ideally, this should culminate in a Christmas day parkrun. Sadly we don’t have parkrun in Thailand, so we will do a family run on Christmas morning, and two-year-old Martin may be allowed to ride in his stroller (I'm not a total monster). This may be a race or just a little jog in the park. Whatever we do, it’ll be a great way of getting a little bit of exercise into a very unhealthy day!

I think it’s going to be important to establish this tradition before Marty is old enough to realize that Christmas doesn’t have to involve so much running. It’s amazing what weird things children will accept if you don't let them know that there are alternatives. Hopefully all the chocolate in his stocking will give him plenty of enthusiasm for his Christmas runs. 

Stockings and running out of the way, it will be time to get down to the real business of Christmas: eating. For the last few years we have gone for a Christmas buffet at a hotel: an excellent range of foods and no problems achieving that authentic Christmas feeling of over-tight trousers and a certainty that if you eat another morsel, you'll vomit. But for the future I'm wondering if there might be better options. Does Marty have to associate Christmas with mindless gluttony? Could we, given the natural glories of Thailand, not start a tradition of Christmas on the beach or in the mountains? 

Hopefully this year we'll start to put some of these Christmas traditions together. I'm getting excited at the thought of opening those first Advent doors, running those first few kilometers, and starting to find those perfect gifts. Although of course I mustn't peak too soon and miss the glorious thrill of Christmas Eve shopping. 

Wishing everyone a splendid December, a merry Christmas, and a happy New Year!

Photos courtesy of the author and Canva.

About the Author

Having enjoyed taking his son to BAMBI playgroups over the past months, Joe is excited to volunteer with BAMBI. He and his wife moved to Thailand from the UK in 2018. In 2021 they were delighted to be joined by their son, Martin. They love exploring Thailand as a family, especially anywhere with a playground or sand!