Christmas is coming

I met a friend at the weekend who told me that her four year old had rushed home from school on the 27th November, yelling “Three days ’til Christmas Mummy! Three days ’til Christmas!” Her class had been talking about Advent and she took a great deal of convincing that she would in fact have to wait three weeks until the big day. Henry has never shown any anticipation of Christmas, nor any special enjoyment of the day itself. He likes looking at photos of Christmas lunches and has a particular fondness for the song ‘When Santa Got Stuck Down the Chimney’ because he likes the sneezing at the end. I suspect if it was called ‘When Simon Got Stuck Down the Chimney’ his joy would be undiminished.

This year things are slightly more confused. When Henry was younger, he used to call ‘crisps’ ‘creemas’- the ‘s’ sound followed by a consonant has always been difficult for him. If asked to identify the fat man in the red suit or a pointy tree with lights he would also say ‘ Creemas’. We could always work out which one he meant, basically because if he said it spontaneously it was always the potato snack. We’ve been working on the ‘s’+ consonant sound over the last year in speech therapy and he’s been saying ‘crisp’ for quite a while. However, in the last two weeks he’s reverted to ‘creemas’ – and this time it’s harder to work out which one he means, because, for the first time ever, he is showing a smattering of interest in the festive season. We went on our regular Monday trip to Sainsburys yesterday – more about life skills than actually needing to do any shopping – and I found myself being pulled towards the Christmas display in the foyer, where there was one of those things you can put your head through and be photographed. There was a lot of ‘creemas, creemas’ going on – but as the only thing that makes the supermarket bearable for Henry is the fact it is home to a large and tempting array of crisps, it could just as easily have been those he was referring to. I decided to risk it.

And thanks to a woman who was selling RAC membership opposite, we even got a photo, of sorts, of the two of us.

Happy Creemas everyone!

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