Every year at this time I get the urge to bake – and voluntarily enter the realm of foolishness.
Its always swelteringly hot, so each year as sweat runs rivers down my back I kneed and roll out the pastry, I question my sanity.
But then, Christmas is not complete without freshly baked cookies and mince pies (grandma’s secret recipe cannot be bought, not even at Woolies).
This year I thought I would be clever and write a tutorial on how to assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. It turned out to be the shortest article I have ever written.
Here goes: “Don’t do it. Who do you think you are, Martha Stewart?”
I had turned my nose up at the ‘ready to assemble’ kits at the grocery store which caught my children’s eyes. At R250 for a little gingerbread and some sweets, you have got to be kidding me.
I am loath to shell out money when I sense I am being done in. This German Christmas gimmick surely cannot be so difficult to bake, I told myself.
As it turned out, I was forced to eat some humble mince pie. Those disgustingly pretty gingerbread houses are a real pain to assemble.
If you – like me – have no idea what you are doing, royal icing sticks to everything but the gingerbread.
And even perfectly traced and cut house walls do not fit together once you begin the build. Despite following the instructions to the tee, I still needed fistfulls of toothpicks to keep my house from collapsing (that’s a free tip you won’t find in any of the baking bloggers recipes).
The house was more ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ then Hansel and Gretel by the time I was done with it. At first I was disheartened, and I almost tossed the lot in the bin in frustration.
But then I realised my children were not in the least bit phased by the lopsided walls and the sagging roof. I let go of that perfect dainty image in my mind and simply enjoyed the process.
There I was with more icing in my hair than on the house, but my boys were happy and quite proud of our creation.
Daniël even installed solar panels and Dstv, extras you will not find in the store bought version.
They proceeded to pick off all the sweets with relish. A week later and we are still eating gingerbread.
Like my gingerbread house, we often have a Pinterest-worthy idea of what our lives should look like.
The real thing is a lot less glamorous.
There is no ‘beauty filter’ for real life.
Real life has bad hair days, a pimple on your nose and children who bicker until you want to have your own adult tantrum on the kitchen floor. A few examples (and no, I’m not making them up) – “He touched me!”, “He’s taking water from my side of the bath!” and “He’s looking out of the window on my side of the car!”
These are the real life complaints of 4- and 6-year-olds I must adjudicate.
And then there’s the Christmas list. Daniël (6) thinks he wants a hover board. A quick Google search informs you that this is the gift most hated by parents after purchase and most likely to land the family in the ER on Christmas Day.
Sadly the hover board is not alone. Almost one in five (19 percent) of unwanted gifts will end up in landfill sites at Christmas, according to research by the UK Gift Card and Voucher Association.
The temptation to put Insta-worthy expectations on life only intensifies over Christmas. We have picture-perfect ideas of what our home, our family and even our holidays should look or be like.
When it does not match our expectations, we may lose the joy of the really important things, the God-given gifts of family, friendship and time.
Define your priorities and put the brakes on before you get sucked into the machine.
Christmas should not be the time to go into debt just to buy gifts for your entire extended family (and then to have them either chucked or re-gifted to someone else).
Instead, telling your family how much they mean to you instead of wasting your money on trinkets, will be treasured for a lifetime.
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“The first Christmas was pretty simple. Its okay if yours is too.”
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