CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW IT IS DECEMBER TOMORROW?! Despite doing decidedly very little this year, the months seem to have passed us by in a flurry of banana bread, Zoom and socially distanced walks. I feel like it was Christmas 2019, lockdown, a few weeks of summer and then somehow we have landed ourselves back in the festive period a little bedraggled and confused.

December is normally my favourite month of the year. It always feels like a time in which magic is it’s most tangible. The twinkling lights are up outside shop fronts and decorating houses, glitter covers every available surface and everyone seems to relax a little in favour of festive cheer. Christmas is the season of the little black dress, the dicky bow and sequins, cracking fires, mulled wine and wooly hats. Selection boxes, apple spiced candles and Macaulay Culkin, the dreary monotony of winter is broken by a little light and undeniable excitement fills the cold air.

This year, Christmas will look very different for the majority of us. There will be no going out, no glitz, no glamour. The little black dress might have to stay in the wardrobe for another year and our outings for mulled wine in the local pub will be put on hold. We might not even be able to have the entire family sitting around the table. That being said, will the fundamentals of Christmas actually change too much? We will still be sitting around the tree on Chirtsmas morning opening our presents, Michale Buble on in the background, his merry tones filling the house with nostalgic charm. The enticing smell of cooking turkey filling the air. We will still pull crackers and be grateful that despite a horrible year in many ways, we all still sit there. The sounds and smells and feel of Christmas will be unwaveringly present, reminding us that despite the awfulness of 2020, there is still something to celebrate.

This got me wondering about what our letters to Santa might look like this year? As we sit down and think about Christmas wishes, lists and polite requests from our loved ones, will they be adjusted, changed or even scrapped all together this year, in favour of more wholesome offerings of love? Will we show more gratitude for the simpler things in life and ditch the luxuries to be replaced with small pleasures? I mean, I wouldn’t mind something under the tree from Santa but, to know that this horrible virus is coming to an end and that those who have been most affected by it have their suffering eased is of course preferable.

What is on your Chrismas wish list this year? If you could pick five things to add, what do you hope for as we head in to December?

All I want for Christmas in 2020 is….

1. Christmas dinner. Including but not limited to pigs in blankets surely the best dish of the year.
2. To be able to give my grandparents a hug without fear and to ease their isolation and solitude somewhat.
3. To go in to 2021 with less anxiety, reminding myself that what will be will be, to focus only on what it is possible to change, leaving everything else to arrive as and when it arrives.
4. To hopefully soon feel safe returning to places I love. Yoga classes, swimming pools, book shops, cafes, the theatre. These are things I now know are luxuries and not to be taken for granted.
5. The safe arrival of my best friends baby girl who is due as we head in to the New Year.

We have lost a lot during 2020, there is no denying it but are we able to acknowledge anything gained? Is there still something, however small, to celebrate this year? I hope that however you are spending your Christmas this year, that you find something to be thankful for and are able to spend it with the people you love, even if it doesn’t look much like Christmases you are used to. I hope that you feel warm, safe, loved and festive. I hope too that as we leave this year behind us, better things are on the horizon for us all.