Christmas Rules

This is a sponsored post.

John Lewis are offering another £25 voucher, and I'm besotted by all their lovely clothes, so I am going to let them jump the sponsored post queue (there's a deadline, sorry). Also, I love Christmas, so a chance to blather on about for a bit, even though it's not yet November, is not to passed up.

So, what they want to know is our Rules for the Perfect Family Christmas:

Children

• Children are an essential ingredient to a perfect Christmas!
• Only children get stockings. When you stop being a child is up for debate, though. Rosemary may get to be one a bit longer, until Eleanor stops...
  
• The youngest child hands out the presents. If the youngest child can't read, she (or he) hands them to the second youngest child to read and then pass out. Or to a grown-up, if none of the children can read.
  
• Stockings, and the one big present that Santa has left under the tree are the only ones to be opened on awakening, and can be opened without grown-ups (but we'd like to see, if you don't mind). Then you have to keep yourself amused with these gifts until lunch is cooking, when the rest of the presents can be opened (or started on - if there are too many, we have to do it in two batches, one before lunch and one after).
  

The Christmas meal

• There absolutely and without question must be roast potatoes. And they cannot be cooked in with any meat or cooked in goose fat, so Mummy can eat them. (Fortunately, Grandma and Grandpa got a double-oven, so Mummy gets this every year.)
  
• There must be brussel sprouts, even if no-one touches them.
• If we're here, we get one of Mummy's vegetarian centre-pieces; if we're at Grandma and Grandpa's, we get some kind of roasted meat or poultry, and Mummy gets to make herself a mini centre-piece.
• There must be a desert that isn't Christmas pudding - even if there has to be Christmas pudding, too.
• Everyone will eat at the dining table (even if it's a ridiculous squeeze), including children. There will be no children's table.
  
• There will be crackers.
  

The in-laws

• Will come to us for a Christmas once they've retired, which Daddy will enjoy, as it will give him an excuse to cook a pig, or some kind of bird, or whatever. In the meantime, we will go there every other year.
  
• And Daddy will have the house invaded by his mother-in-law and sister-in-law every other year.
  

Entertainment

• There will be family games (of the board game variety). No-one will be allowed to get out of them, unless there's a limit on how many people can play, or possibly if it's gone their bedtime, or they can't sit up unaided.
• There will be a film and everyone will fall asleep.
• Christmas music will be played and sung all through December.
  

Decorations

• Decorations will go up some time in December and come down before 6 January. Usually.
  
• Mummy and Daddy will disagree about how much decoration there will be.
  
• The tree will be the fold-away one in the basement, because pine needles are a bugger to get rid of, and we don't want to chop down a whole tree just for a few week's prettiness.
• Cards will be hung on string from the ceiling or along the walls, not balanced precariously on mantelpieces and TVs.
  

Now... I think Chris may want to rewrite some of these when he reads them.