The “Crap Parent” Christmas Award

The children being teenagers now are not getting up at 5am to see what Santa Claus has left for them under the tree.

No carrots left out for Rudolph and no cookies for Santa.

That lovely part of Christmas has well and truly been exposed. I think that is one of the parts of early childhood that is the most enchanting and as a parent it is a bit sad when you realise that your child is too old to believe in Santa Claus.

My youngest daughter told me recently that she knew that Santa Claus wasn’t real because the presents from him were wrapped in the same paper as all the others from us and the hand writing was the same.

I had committed the cardinal sin of not disguising Santa’s presents in different wrapping paper; I had received the “crap parent” award. She was ten years old, it wouldn’t be long before some other child told her anyway, well at least that thought made me feel better.

The same Christmas my daughter received a spinning Barbie, it didn’t need batteries (bonus, because I didn’t have any, who does on Christmas day?) and it had a wind up pulley that made her spin.

In our eagerness to get the package open I inadvertently cut through the rip cord and rendered Barbie incapable of twisting and twirling like the picture on the front of the box.

Talk about feeling shitty, I had destroyed my daughters Christmas present in one foul swoop. She was now just a plain old Barbie, no bells and whistles and definitely no whirling action.

I know the manufacturers of children’s toys strap them into their presentation boxes with the same fortitude as fort Knox to alleviate shoplifting but I am sure every parent on the planet has struggled with the wires and plastic loops trying to set their child’s toys free on Christmas day.

I don’t think I would be the only parent who after sheer frustration of cutting though prison grade wires has reduced the toy to a useless piece of plastic.

The same can be said of erecting tents, putting bicycles together and building trampolines, something is bound to go wrong. Thank goodness our children were never into cycling, the thought of building a bike on Christmas Eve is worse than building IKEA furniture.