The Wigan Christmas Idea I Want My Kids Involved In This Year

Every October I start getting the usual questions from the kids about what they want for Christmas, and every October I have the same slightly guilty feeling that the whole thing has become a list of stuff. So a headline in Wigan Today this week caught me properly off guard, in a good way. It read: "It's not just gifts: it's about showing older people they have not been forgotten".

I'm not going to pretend I can give you every detail of the scheme, so go and read the original piece for the specifics. But the gist is clear enough from the headline alone: there is a Christmas effort in Wigan aimed at older people, and the point of it is not really the present in the wrapping paper. It's the message that somebody thought about you.

Why this is a family thing, not a charity thing

When we talk about fun things to do as a family at Christmas, we usually mean the lights switch-on, a panto, a grotto, maybe a trip into Manchester for the markets. All good. We'll do most of them. But I've come to think the kids remember the things they did for someone else far longer than the things that were done for them.

My eldest still talks about the year we dropped a bag of food at a collection point and the lady behind the table shook his hand. That cost us a tenner and twenty minutes. The expensive theatre trip the same week? Barely a flicker.

So here's how I reckon a story like this one turns into a proper family activity rather than a parent quietly sticking a fiver in a box:

• Let the kids pick the gift. Not you. Them. Give them a budget and let them wander round the shops in Wigan thinking about what an older person they've never met might actually like. You'll be surprised what they come up with, and you'll have a decent conversation on the way round.
• Get them to write the card. Handwriting, spelling mistakes and all. A card from a seven-year-old is worth more than anything I could print.
• Talk about who it's for. This is the bit that matters. Ask them who they know that's older. Grandparents, a neighbour, the chap who always says hello at the school gate. Then ask what Christmas might feel like if nobody rang.

The bit that got me

The phrase "have not been forgotten" is doing a lot of work in that headline. As a working dad I'm forever rushing, and my own parents and my wife's parents get squeezed into the gaps. I'll be honest, there are weeks where a phone call to my mum slips to the following week. If I'm doing that to people I love, there are plenty of older folk in this town with nobody doing even that much.

I don't think the answer is to make Christmas a guilt trip for the kids. The answer is to make the giving part as normal and as fun as the receiving part. Wrap the gift together at the kitchen table with a brew and a mince pie on the go. Make an afternoon of it.

What we're going to do

I'm going to read the full Wigan Today piece properly with the kids this weekend and see what's being asked for. Then one Saturday in November, before the panto and before the grotto, we're going to do this first. If you're in Wigan and you've got kids who already have more toys than they can play with, I'd suggest you do the same. It's cheap, it's local, and it might be the only bit of Christmas they still remember when they've got kids of their own.