Melville Cooke

Despite having not lot or gift-wrapped parcel with Christmas, there is one song for the season of good cheer and weight gain that I (and, judging by the frequency with which it is played, many others) simply adore.

It is a narration in which the recipient of the 12 gifts for the days of Christmas, Govnesh, moves from delight at the 'partridge in a pear tree' to concern by the 'four calling birds', gets a lift from the 'five gold rings' but is a broken man by the time the '10 Lords a Leaping' get to cavorting with the 'nine ladies dancing', with the drummer and pipers in the noisy mix.

It is a piece of funny fantasy, but the more than dozen days that children are off from school during the Christmas to New Year period is very real. And while they may touch the humerus figuratively at times, they are more likely to get to the hammer, anvil and stirrup further north more quickly and much more often.

This is especially so for us parents of young children, who do not have the company of their fellow ankle-biters (as Tanya Batson-Savage so delightfully put it) during the days for their wild pursuits. Instead, they wake up with all that energy and carry it right through the day, non-stop.

I can understand how Govnesh, who ends up sobbing, feels.

Unlike the three-month summer break, where you can ship them off somewhere on the pretext of 'summer school' (which many times is really a holding area for the little terrorists in training), the Christmas break is too short to get them out of the house. And unlike Easter, there is the programmed excitement of the Christmas season, lights, television programmes and all.

So, in addition to the children having loads of time on their hands, there is the adrenalin rush of grazing reindeer and nodding Santas, all dressed up in lights. It is a recipe for a persistent, pounding, parents' headache.

Timing is crucial

In the interests of having at least somewhat sane parents in January, I suggest that we plan a parent holiday into the children's Christmas holiday. It would not have to be more than one day. It would not even have to be a full 24 hours; 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 a.m. the following day would do nicely. The timing is crucial; it does not make any sense to have the parents on holiday when they are at work, but still we would love to see the happy little tyrants off into the care of the people we know well who would be entrusted with our children's care. Then, when they come back at 10:00 a.m. we would be at work, so whoever is at home to take care of them until evening will bear the brunt of the tall tales from the overnight trip.

By the time we get home, they would (hopefully) be yawning and just want a hug and a story to be off to bed. That sounds like the perfect parent present to me.

Of course, this takes place informally on an individual basis, but for a general sense of renewal, of relief, it should be organised on a massive scale. Coupled with the relief from traffic since school is out, it would really bring a season of good cheer, if only for a day.

Seriously, though, serious parenting is a full-time job with no description, no leave, no promotion and no pension, although the continuous bonus of joy from seeing your child happy and maturing cannot be put on a balance sheet. Though we long for a break sometimes, we are concerned when the young ones are away from us.

So as they send the coming New Year ringing in our ears long before the official ringing in, we give thanks that they are well, taking the noise as an indication that they are in decent shape.

It is when they go quiet that we go looking.

Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.