Christmas amid Covid: It's time to be grateful for small blessings – Hayley Matthews

I’d mentioned a few weeks back how I was struggling to get into the Christmas spirit.

No decorations were up, the painting hadn't been finished in the kitchen (still hasn’t) nor was I particularly feeling warm and fuzzy like a lovely tempting cup of eggnog.

Then, I had a sudden realisation I hadn't filled our reusable fabric advent calendar that my son Harris has had for years.

The mum guilt was massive! I’ve been so distracted with other things I’d completely forgotten. This has since been filled twice with Lindt chocolates. However, a chocolate fairly keeps eating them at night.

But back to the major thing I realised – I’d no idea what we were actually doing on Christmas Day. We'd made reservations back in January for a pub lunch with some family.

However, one of those family members has gone through quite a lot of hospital visits this year and as a result has been shielding so we started feeling nervous about meeting up. With everything up in the air recently, I'm sure we're not the only ones feeling like that.

So we bit the bullet and cancelled our reservation. As disappointing as it is, we have a roof over our heads, tins in the cupboard, fresh running water and a bottle of gin, so really, we’ve nothing to complain about.

And as always, I'm trying to keep it real and remember to be grateful for small blessings which I'm sure the big man/woman up there would approve of. Isn’t that the true meaning of Christmas?

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