Christmas is What You Make It
Christmas. It can be the most wonderful time of the year. Full of toasty warmth, wintry scents, yummy treats, glee-inspiring gifts and hearty meals. If you’re lucky.
Christmas can also be a time to be reminded of who are the haves, and if you’re a have not. Or to be reminded of the other ways that we differ, including if we celebrate Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or nothing at all based on our culture and religion.
Christmas universally should be a time to relax. To enjoy the company of the ones you love, and to seek connection and adventure. Snowball fights. Toboggans. It also should be a time for being reasonable. Not every dad can afford to get their kids a PS5 or iPhone 16 or other high ticket items in the letter to Santa. Sending some extra cash the direction of those families through an organization like Life Spin will make you feel good and help them too.
My child once told me that a girl in her class was obviously liked more than she was by Santa, because the other girl got an iPhone and an iPad. I spilled the beans that Santa doesn’t give Apple devices and the other kids’ parents were full of it. Don’t be that parent.
The holidays are a chance to start new traditions that can be passed down in your family, like making a breakfast casserole and a dessert together on Christmas Eve. Or saving up some change and dropping off Tim’s cards to people sleeping rough along Dundas so they can warm up inside a coffee shop as a paying customer. Show your kids that during the Christmas holidays, it’s all about kindness and showing others that you care, not the temporary dopamine hit that comes with your living room turning into a Best Buy.
The expensive stuff will break or become obsolete pretty quickly. But the time you spent together, the things you did for others, and the way you made them feel during that time off work will last forever. They’ll tell their kids about it one day.
Jeremy McCall is a married father of 3, a social services case manager, and known as “The Dadfather”, being the founder and Past President of Dad Club London.
