From what my friends who are parents say, Christmas is a time of great anxiety. They bend over backwards to provide the perfect day to their kids. My mum always seems wound up in December too. She makes an amazing spread of food but always comments about how tired she is and how glad she will be when it’s all over. I always help out with prepping the veg and laying the table, but she still gets really stressed.

Linda says she gets some festive stress as well because she caters for nearly twenty members of her family on Christmas Day but insists that advance prep work and planning are the way to go. I am amazed she even knows what such things are. She never does that work in the library.

I never fully understood this Christmas Anxiety until this year. I’m not running around keepin...

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