Christmas in Wigan: the bit kids actually remember

Every October the Christmas chatter starts and I tune most of it out. This week a piece in Wigan Today cut through it, with a line about how, for a child, having something to open and enjoy is a special part of Christmas. That is the whole job in one sentence, and it is worth sitting with for a minute.

As a dad and stepdad, I have watched kids unwrap a ten pound gift with more joy than a much bigger present they did not ask for. They remember the opening. The paper on the floor, the chaos, the thing they can actually play with that afternoon. They do not remember what it cost, and they definitely do not remember whether it arrived in the right branded box.

What family fun in Wigan actually costs

The same logic applies to the rest of the Christmas break. The days out that stick with my lot are rarely the expensive ones. A walk round Haigh Woodland Park with a flask in the boot, the town centre lights on a dark afternoon, a trip to the chippy because nobody could be bothered cooking. None of that needs booking in September or paying off in January.

If you are a working dad trying to plan the fortnight off, my advice is boring and it works:

• Book your leave early, before the rota fills up with people who planned better than you.
• Protect one full day with nothing in the diary. Not a day out, just a day.
• Keep a couple of cheap options in your back pocket for the day everyone gets ratty indoors.
• Do the present shopping from a list, not from a panic on the 23rd.

The story in Wigan Today is a reminder that some families in the borough are not choosing between an expensive day out and a cheap one. They are working out how to make sure there is something under the tree at all. That is a different Christmas morning, and it is happening a few streets from most of us reading this.

Giving back is part of the family fun too

One thing I have started doing with the kids is making the giving part of the tradition rather than a footnote to it. They help choose a gift for another child, and they hand it over themselves. It costs me an extra tenner and about twenty minutes, and it does more for their understanding of the season than any light show we could drive to.

Have a read of the full piece in Wigan Today and see what is being asked for locally. Then put one thing in the diary for the holidays that costs nothing and involves being in the same room as your kids without your phone in your hand. That is the bit they will remember when they are grown, and it is the bit you cannot buy late on Christmas Eve.

Related: The Fete of Wigan: Who Turns Up, and Who Never Hears