In the mood WISDOM
LIFE AS I KNOW IT
At Christmas, it’s the little things, not grand gestures, that help you see and be seen, writes Harriet Minter
“ Each year, I write a Christmas list for my family.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy the surprise of a perfectly chosen gift that I would never have thought to ask for, it’s just that, more often than not, someone else’s idea of the perfectly chosen gift is not mine.
I’d rather they just stuck to the list. However, there is one area where I willingly hand over control – the Christmas stocking.
My mum has done a stocking for my sister and I our whole lives, and for the past couple of decades, we’ve done one for her, too. There are traditions to the stocking. It will always contain chocolate coins, a pair of tights, and cotton wool pads. There will be some sort of seasonal decoration, and probably a jokey game of the sort you’d find in a cracker. And then there will be all sorts of odds and sods that make up daily life. We’ll buy each other little bits of make-up or skin care, shampoo and conditioner miniatures. There will be dried herbs or spices, kitchen utensils to replace the battered ones in the back of the drawer, and inevitably a tea towel. We use stockings as a chance to refresh each other’s daily lives, to replace the small things that you make do with because there’s always something more important to spend the money on.
In previous relationships, I’ve done stockings for my partner, too. They vary only slightly from the one I’d
