It’s that time of year again and the pressure is on for us to have a perfect Christmas, with family and friends gathered for home cooked restaurant quality food, professionally wrapped presents, and a fabulously decorated tree and house. And each year it seems the pressure for a perfect Christmas increases, with more and more adverts showing us how to live and celebrate Christmas in the best way.

But they don’t reflect the reality of many of our lives. We don’t all have big, loving families and a large group of friends to invite us to parties and gatherings. We don’t all have money and time to plan and organise for the perfect Christmas. Some of us find winter hard enough with the less light and cold weather.

We live in an imperfect world – we don’t need this added pressure. And even if we have enough money and time there can be other things in our lives that we feel are more important. So we should stop trying for someone else’s image of perfection.
Have Christmas on your terms and in the ways you enjoy and not the ways films, TV and adverts tell us. We all like different things, so why do we all have to do the same things at Christmas? Keep it simple, spend less, eat less and get outside if and when it stops raining and only meet up with people who bring you joy.

Best wishes for the next few weeks, whatever you are doing, and for 2016.