Esther Chilton

This week’s writing prompt is

GIFTS

My prompt last week was Christmas, so it would be easy to think I mean Christmas gifts. If that’s where the prompt takes you, that’s fine, but there are lots of other interpretations of ‘gifts’. For example, you might see good health as being a gift. My cat brings me ‘gifts’. A gift might be a donation to a charity, or a tip given to someone who has given good service. You might have been told you have a gift for drawing or singing. You can share your thoughts on what the prompt means to you, turn it into a poem or make something up for a story.

You don’t have to share your work, but I always enjoy seeing what you come up with if the prompt gives you inspiration. Here is the work you shared on last week’s prompt CHRISTMAS.

Ladyleemanila:

Tinsels and glitters

And Christmas jitters

The tree is up with baubles

Some presents under

Waiting with wonder

Slap away your troubles

The fairy on top

Finest in the shop

Santa’s bringing all the toys

Christmas lights outside

We’re all satisfied

Have you been good, girls and boys?

Pensitivity101:

Shops have a different calendar to the rest of us.

Staff at our garden centre start preparing for their Christmas displays in July, though they have to work round Halloween and Fireworks.

Shops are full of festive ware WAY before the beginning of December and I saw the first Christmas cards in shops four months ago. Post early for Christmas takes on a whole new meaning then!

I’ve made all of mine again and will be posting them out the first week in December.

When I was raising a family, Christmas was expensive and expectations high.  I used to start my Christmas shopping in the Summer, wrapping and tagging everything. By the time Christmas came around, I’d forgotten most of what I’d bought so it was a surprise to me too when people opened their gifts.

I was always Host for Christmas… not just to us (partner, his two kids and any fosters we had at the time), but his ex wife and her partner, his mother and step father and in later years her sister and husband too! One year my parents also came up for Christmas Day and it’s the only time I ever had help with washing up afterwards!

This year will be our 36th and we have never had a bad one. Money has always been tight, but everyone got something, even if it was from car boot sales or charity shops.

Now being so far away, we don’t have a lot of gifts to buy as we don’t see family at all.
Christmas is private and personal, just us, though last year our friend came round for Christmas dinner. Such a precious memory as she died in July.

I am glad when it’s over though, as the scales show how much we’ve eaten over the holidays and no I don’t look forward to the sales!

Funniest thing is that one year the Easter Eggs went on sale on Boxing Day!

baldacchinodiperla:

Christmas is to share the same illusion, as a prospective for the New Year’s Eve.

John W. Howell:

I know Christmas is upon us. I just finished surrounding the tree with a Tempeste safe fence. What is even worse is I had to do it while she was at agility class so that I could finish the job with no interruptions. Thanks for Sharing my wishes and here is a Haiku like poem.

Please don’t say it’s true,

Never has a year flown by . . .

As quick as this one

The Bag Lady:

Chaos

Hurrying

Reindeer?

Icy roads

Stocking stuffing

Tree choosing

Mistletoe kisses

Angels made in snow

Sparkling lighted trees

Utahan15:

this is not xmas

not yet

sunday is advent

four weeks long

this is not xmas

season ends

another begins

so soon too

me to you

you and i

can only ask why

noel fres

open the season

which is the eternal reason

heaven where bread is unleaven

between the apse and nave

our eternal immortal souls to save

ooof!

Stine Writing:

I don’t like that stores have Christmas stuff out so early. I don’t think we should see Christmas until after Thanksgiving. I think it takes so much of the fun away and to be honest, how can kids get so excited over seeing Santa when they’ve been bombarded for three months? My mother used to cook for Christmas Eve and then I did when I had my new family. Now, it is really just David and I.

Therapy Bits:

I always spend Christmas with my parents.

I know how blessed I am to still have them. I don’t take it for granted.

I know some day there will come a time when they are no longer here.

We usually get up early on Christmas day. We exchange gifts, and have breakfast, then mom gets busy in the kitchen cooking turkey, ham, vegetables, stuffing, gravy, etc.

She said this year she’s going to make her own stuffing.

My sister usually comes over for an hour or two before lunch, but then she heads off to her partners family, they’ve done that for years now.

When my sister and her family come over, we exchange gifts with them, then we all usually have a glass of some sort of alcoholic drink.

After we’ve all had lunch that is mom, dad and me, and sometimes my dad’s brother is also with us, but this year he won’t be, we all watch tv, Christmas movies, Christmas specials of certain TV shows.

Sometimes we play games.

I will usually take a nap in the late afternoon.

Then in the evening we eat turkey sandwiches, Christmas cake, and mince pies.

And of course lots of chocolate too!

I usually go up to my bedroom in the evening around 8 PM, and I just check emails, read, enjoy more Christmas specials watching them on my laptop.

My Christmas starts on the 20th of December, because that is when I leave my own house and go to my parents house, and I usually stay until January 2nd.

Joanne Rambling:

All I can think at this moment is how Christmas seems to come around so fast.

Christine Mallaband-Brown:

Christmas, alone for another year. Make Merry they say. Bah Humbug! Do I reply? No, I’m not so lost that I turn my cheek to the world. But a quiet Christmas? Maybe. One chicken leg. A small bottle of beer. Three sprouts if I’m lucky? Any sparkle and cheer? I might make handmade crackers and tie one end to the door handle to pull them. Meanwhile, I bought myself a new garden bench to sit alone on, so happy new year, dear.

Tessa:

I have never enjoyed Christmas. It was always something to have to endure. Even as a child I hated Christmas. We were poor, but my parents managed to buy a house in an expensive town. All of our friends got expensive gifts for Christmas and we always wondered why Santa brought all of our friends all kinds of nice things and we got practically nothing. And you can’t explain that to a child. Once an adult, yes, it made more sense, but it didn’t take the pain away from your friends bragging about all of their wonderful presents.

My ex-hubby made sure our children had lots of expensive gifts that we put on a credit card and paid for all year and part of the next. We next caught up.

Bah! Humbug!

Life Lessons:

Christmas below the Tropic of Cancer

Many once among us have long since passed away,

so we’ll make do with newer friends on this Christmas day.

We will light our candles and cook the spiral ham.

Eat the sugar cookies filled with nuts and jam.

We’ll enjoy the babble around the Christmas table

and squeeze another helping of pie in if we’re able.

The sounds and tastes of Christmas are fraught with memories—

with bubble lights upon the tree and packages to squeeze,

but the nice thing about memories is that we keep on making them,

for supplementing memories does not mean we’re forsaking them!

The Elephant’s Trunk:

Yay! Daddy’s bringing down the boxes of Christmas stuff from the attic! There’s a bunch of plastic tubs with a million trillion ornaments in them and another ginormous box with the tree inside. Daddy’s saying bad words coz the box is heavy; he said he’s tired of busting his hump. I never saw a hump anywhere on my Daddy. Mommy keeps slapping his arm and telling him to be quiet and stop talking like that coz little walls have big ears. What the heck does that even mean?? Whatever it is, I don’t like it! It’s giving me the willies!

Mommy says we gotta put up the tree and cook all this stinky fish for dinner before going to church. Yuck! I wanna have pizza but she said no coz fish on Christmas Eve is the Sicilian trabition. I don’t know what that is either coz nobody tells me anything seeing as how I’m just a kid.

Oh no! The tree is broken in a hundred pieces! Why can’t we have a real tree like my friend Susie? Her family cuts down their tree every year and I think it smells really nice …. just like the forest. Mommy says real trees are a waste of money. They’re sticky, and drip sappy stuff and pine needles all over her white rug.

Whew! Daddy says it’s okay … the tree isn’t broken. It comes in pieces like a puzzle and we gotta put it together. Now Daddy’s complaining about the tree being a pain in his backside (but he didn’t use the word backside) and Mommy’s eyes are bugging outta her head! I’m gonna go watch Felix the Cat. I don’t wanna put the tree together. There’s too much yelling going on. I just wanna hang ornaments and hold tinsel against the hot lights until it melts and snaps in half. Now that’s really cool!  

Oh, Daddy’s calling me. WOW! The tree is up and all covered with lights and it’s time to hang the ornaments! Mommy’s got this one special box that nobody’s allowed to touch coz it’s got all these old baby ornaments inside and they always make Mommy cry. I don’t know what’s so special about them. I’ve got a Gumby & Pokey ornament. Now THAT’S special! I gotta use the stepstool to reach the higher branches. Mommy says I better not fall in the tree like I did last year. Boy, did she get mad! Finally it’s time for the angel and Daddy lifts me way up high to reach the tippy top. She’s the most beautiful angel I’ve ever seen and I just wanna stare at her all night. 

Ding Dong! Yay! Grammy and Grampy are here! Grampy says the fish smells delicious. Pee yew! Is he kidding or what?!? He’s old and must have lost is sense of smell. I’m not gonna eat it. I’m just gonna have some pisgetti. After dinner Mommy says we gotta get dressed for church. I don’t wanna go but Grammy says it’ll be sinning if we don’t go and then Santa won’t come. Well, that got me really upset and right away Grampy said Grammy’s just teasing me and Santa’s gonna come whether we go to church or not. I sure wish grownups would get their stories straight and not say so many stupid things! I’m gonna remember not to be stupid when I grow up. 

Oh man! We’re late and now there’s no place to park at church! Daddy’s saying more bad words and Mommy’s slapping his arm again. FINALLY we park and go inside. WHOA!! It’s so pretty inside! So many candles and twinkly lights, like a fairy tale. And there must be a zillion people here! Grampy said they’re all a bunch of phony baloneys. Boy, Grammy gave him a really big punch on the arm for that! I bet he’s gonna have a swell black & blue mark! We squeeze onto a bench and I snuggle into Mommy’s fur coat. It’s so soft and warm. I just wanna go to sleep. Maybe I can nap for just a little while coz Santa’s coming tonight and I’m gonna stay up all night and wait for him. 

Woohoo! I did it! I stayed up all ni….. 

Wait a minute! How’d I get in my jammies? And I’m not in church any more … I’m in bed! It’s Christmas morning and I missed Santa! I fly down the stairs coz I can smell the bacon and pancakes that Mommy’s making. Yay!! Santa came! Santa came! Look at all the presents! Mommy says breakfast first, then we can open the presents.

Jeez! Grownups and their stupid rules!

Sharon Harvey:

Christmas is a time for families to enjoy, my late mum and I certainly did.

We would decorate the room first with those balloons and those paper bells (Remember those?!) hanging from the ceiling and other decorative Christmas stuff. Then it was time for the Christmas tree, the same love and attention went into that that went into the rest of the room, the only time it went wrong, was when I decided to try and be brave and offered to get up the ladders and do the ceiling decorations. Mum knew of my fear of heights and so was slightly concerned of why I offered but she relented and up I went up the ladder to continue where she had left off. Only it wasn’t that simple was it?

No, to my utter horror, I froze and I said, ‘Mum?’

‘Yes?’

‘I can’t move!’

I couldn’t obviously see my mum’s face but she tried to coax me down but to no avail, I was willing to go, my body not so much!

Eventually, though goodness knows how, I managed to get down and back up went Mum to finish off her job that she had started.  

Anyway, we got on with the Christmas tree although my little incident didn’t go without a couple of mentions – that was us, and lots of giggles and head shakes followed!

After all that had been completed we started on the baking. We baked cakes, mince pies etc. Mum told me we had to make more mince pies as Santa loved them, which I found out when I left one out for him when I went to bed Christmas Eve night to wake up Christmas Morning and it had gone.

Talking of which, I had gone to bed to await Santa’s visit and the next morning when I woke up, my eyes widened at all the presents at the end of my bed.  I would tear the paper off of them and then run downstairs and be astounded at the amount of presents awaiting for me under the tree, thinking what I had had been up on my bed.

Over the years our custom continued, the decorating of the room (though I never offered to get up the ladder again, quite possibly to everyone’s relief!), the Christmas tree and the baking. Once again, more mince pies were baked though it did then occur too me that I had realised Mum loved mince pies….

‘Those mince pies were never for Santa were they, they were for you!’ I turned to say to her.

Her reply? A smirk.

Since her death over Christmas I had really mixed feelings about it. Do I still enjoy it and remember the fun times we had or remember what had been cruelly ripped from me? 

I did hate it for a while but after I thought about it, whilst I think she would probably have ‘allowed’ me to feel upset over Christmas because of her death, I think she would have then said ‘okay come on, now start enjoying it for me, for us for what it meant to us and our enjoyment of the time.’

Somewhere along the way I realised I was enjoying the time again.

Last year I got excited. This year I noticed a distinct change in that feeling. This year I found myself in love with the festive season again. This did catch me off guard somewhat as whilst I accepted my feelings had changed finally to excitement of enjoying it, I wasn’t ready to feel the love I used to feel for it and it caught me somewhat off guard.

I’m ready to once again embrace the love & spirit of Christmas and that’s great.

I was super happy to have this article accepted in the Guardian magazine. My first published article. Think my mum would have been super proud of this and me. 

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