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You know how everyone talks about planning the perfect Christmas? Well, this year taught me that sometimes the best times come from things going completely off-script.
It started with a crash. Literally! A week before Christmas, I opened my kitchen cupboard next to my cooker for all the top shelf contents - including bottles of olive oil and vinegar - to come crashing out onto my hob smashing it beyond repair. Our traditional family Christmas dinner? Gone in an instant! No roast turkey, nor roast tatties, or stuffing.
I was in such a panic - how do you host Christmas without a working hob? Especially when I had to turn the hob and oven electricity off at the wall.
Once I'd calmed down a bit, I looked into ordering a new hob, thinking I had enough time to get it replaced. But NO!, the earliest date the suppliers could install it was 4th January!
But here's the thing about disasters: they have a funny way of forcing you to think about things differently.
Instead of my Christmas dinner, we had to get creative. I could get a medium chicken into the air fryer and I'd already experimented with roasting tatties in it. The veggies could be microwaved - and much to mum's horror - so could the gravy. Her solution in the early hours, after lying awake worrying about not getting her 'proper meat gravy', was to order a table top mini oven with induction plates!
What surprised me most wasn't how we managed to cook a decent meal – it was how much more relaxed and fun we all had in the process. Everyone pitched in without complaint and we had no dinner deadline. Using the table top induction hob was a bit of a precarious adventure but Mum got her gravy and I even cooked the stuffing in the little oven, rather than pre-cooking it at Mum's on Christmas Eve!
But here's the thing. Without the pressure of executing the "perfect" Christmas dinner, we laughed more, and I stressed less. Instead of me being stuck in the kitchen all day, we spent more time actually being together. The meal we eventually had wasn't what I'd planned, but it was created with more joy and togetherness than any previous Christmas dinner. It made our Christmas!
Looking back, that broken hob gave us something unexpected: a reminder that perfection isn't what makes memories special. Sometimes it's the challenges that bring us closer together, forcing us to adapt and collaborate in ways we never would have otherwise.
So this year taught me a valuable lesson: when life smashes your carefully laid plans, sometimes it's making space for something better. We get so caught up in delivering our family and friends the perfect Christmas – we forget that it's about the moments we share, the obstacles we overcome together, and the unexpected joy we find along the way that is so important and what Christmas is really all about!
Next year, I might even deliberately plan something a little less perfect. After all, some of the best memories come from things going wonderfully wrong, and that is more than just OK!
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