Notes from a beautifully messy December
Every year, around mid-November, I make the same bold declaration:
“This Christmas, I’m going to be organised.”
It’s a lie, obviously. A hopeful one. The kind you say out loud so the universe can have a little chuckle before sending you a fresh round of logistical coconuts to dodge. But still — I persist.
Christmas for us in Australia (in theory) is twinkly lights and long, sun-kissed evenings. Children who happily share the sticky tape while they make paper-chain decorations. Johnny Farnham and Olivia filling the house with carols.
In reality, it’s wrestling fairy lights that somehow became hopelessly knotted in storage, navigating school concerts and staff parties, and whisper-screaming at your partner, “Did you remember to move the elf?” at 11:48pm.
(Disclaimer: I’ve never actually had an elf. That level of pressure would absolutely be my tipping point.)
It’s the emotional load that gets me the most — the sheer number of things we’re meant to remember. The gifts. The wrapping paper we swore we had enough of (we did not). The batteries. The Secret Santa present that must be both thoughtful and under $10, which is the emotional equivalent of baking a soufflé in a windstorm.
And layered over all of it is this quiet, constant pressure to make it magical.
To hold it all together — the meals, the memories, the moments — as if Christmas itself might buckle if we stop spinning our plates.
Some years, especially when the boys were little, I genuinely wasn’t sure I’d make it through December with my sanity intact. I’d hear sudden silence in the house and my soul would leave my body. Silence rarely meant peace; it usually meant nudity, permanent marker, or someone attempting a circus trick from the top bunk.
But sometimes — blessedly — the chaos turned into something else.
Something ridiculous. Funny. Unexpectedly tender.
Like the year Josh, not yet one, somehow climbed into the “Santa thing” (which is what we now lovingly call the fireplace). His brothers thundered down the hall to alert me with the kind of urgency that suggested either a breakthrough or a crime scene. And there he was — our tiny explorer — sitting at the bottom of Santa’s imaginary chimney like he’d simply been waiting for a lift to the North Pole.
One child was naked (of course). Another was proudly clothed but sticky. The tree beside us leaned ever so slightly left because a toddler had “helped.” And instead of feeling overwhelmed — as I so often did — I laughed. We all laughed. And in that sooty little hearth, for one brief, beautiful moment, it all felt like enough.
That’s the part we forget when we’re trying to keep it all together. Sometimes “together” just means us — in whatever shape we arrive in. Clothed, unclothed, branded by the unpredictability of a permanent marker gone AWOL, clinging to hope by a single fraying tinsel thread.
So this year, if you’re behind on the wrapping or staring blankly at a shopping list that feels like a personal attack, take a breath. Let something slide. Sit on the floor with the kids and admire the lopsided tree. Celebrate the silly. Forgive the mess. Notice the moment that makes you giggle in spite of yourself.
Because Christmas was never meant to be perfect.
It was meant to be lived — wildly, imperfectly, humanly.
And honestly, that’s more than enough.
At Minimuds, we believe childhood is meant to be lived with dirt under fingernails, knees on the ground, and room to breathe. Especially at Christmas.
If this season feels loud or heavy, step outside when you can. Let the kids run. Let the mess be part of the memory. The magic doesn’t live in the perfect plan — it lives in the moments that happen when we loosen our grip and let things be a little wild.