Ways We Can Enjoy a Happy Christmas, even without family!

You bought the cards, the wrapping paper; you've been making stockings and wreaths and cross stitched reindeer pillow cases all through the year.

You've practiced how to make Jamie Oliver's roast potatoes many, many times.

You haven't ordered the turkey, just yet. Good.

You won't be needing it now.

The kids (and grand kids) won't be coming home for Christmas after all.

"Just can't afford to drive down it this year Mom and anyway it isn't worth it because we have to work on the 27th!".

Amen to tradition. Amen to family - this Christmas.

It is sad.

But you can turn it into a different sort of Christmas time that you might not regret!

Here are some suggestions how;

• Help others at Christmas
• Be glad you don't have to do all that preparing work like shopping and cooking this year
• Do things you haven't done since you were a child
• Spoil yourselves
• Be happy!

Thinking of the unfortunate families in the world isn't always the first thought to cross our minds as a busy Mom, though perhaps the Christmas carol music went to Oxfam, we supported orangutangs in extinction with our Christmas cards, or we didn't buy cards - to save the forests. But somehow shelving the desire to really help all those millions of starving people and infants out there who have nothing - except flies hatching eggs in their eyes - has been our usual Christmas modus operandi. (Speaking personally).

Now's the chance to do something about it. With all the new time on your hands you can get on the phone (or onto your lap top) to search for charities - and you can really help.

Below are links for charities for the troops fighting round the world and their families.

Remember all those early Christmas mornings? In the kitchen, hoisting a roasting 20lb turkey in and out of an oven whilst everyone else was screeching with laughter round the new whatever present? The goodwill smile plastered on your exhausted face along with some inappropriate lipstick fumbled upon in the dawn light? The panic, the stress, the work! Lots of all of it.

Well, suddenly this Christmas, there's none of it. There is a clear horizon on 24th 25th and 26th December and there are ways we can enjoy a happy Christmas, even without the family!

You don't have to do ANY Christmas food shopping Mom! Try to look on the upside of this. It isn't that hard:

• You will be in-hand a small fortune.
• You might not even get into debt this year.
• You don't have to struggle with crowds of people in the stores feeling wretched (because it really isn't supposed to feel like this).
• Nor lug home tons of stuff and stuff and stuff!

You can think of what to do with the money you save (perhaps after you have done what you'd like to do for others).

• You can buy a gift for yourself (like that super iPad you only ever dream about or a GPS Navigator for your good husband)

You can think of doing the things you haven't done since before you had a family.

More than that. You can do them! Here's a silly, fun list of alternate things you could do:

• Build a snowman and stick the carrot in his nose!
• Invite your neighbors in for a glass of sherry, or yourselves to their home.
• Go to the Christmas services.
• Oh! Make an appointment for beauty treatments at a spa and look beautiful for a few days, with manicured nails.

Instead of buying and decorating a tree, as you have always done with your family, you could decorate any kind of tree branch! You could go out for a walk in the country to look for one. It is so beautiful in winter.

Life is beginning again deep in the heart of it, deep underground where the seeds are only just cracking open. There is an invigorating sense of purity in the stripped-backness of the countryside. The natural world is a series of simpler, profounder, starker lines. The air is sharp and pure. There's time to stroll, to meditate and listen to the robins twitter in the somberness. It is divine. You might find some mistletoe or a tree branch you like and bring it home - as you did when you were a child. Why not?

• Paint it white,
• Hang some aniseed seeds or red carnations, or tangerines or chocolates angles on it
• Play music you love that reminds you of your other Christmases with the family
• Call the family up and say that you are happy (because by now you probably are)

Since you aren't going to be cooking up a banquet you can ask Grandpa, or is it Dad? to reserve at a restaurant you love, or make a simple but luxurious meal at home for just yourselves - making it romantic too.

Alternatively, you might prefer to invite some friends to celebrate with you in your home. There are always folk around who are stuck for a family over Christmas! They could come for an evening. You could serve cocktails and finger foods and play sophisticated music you love (as opposed to heavy metal your son loves). You could make a fondue!

Have a very happy Christmas!