I’ve never quite seen the point of teaching kids to believe in Santa Claus. The “It’s a tradition” argument doesn’t fly with me. “Everybody else does it” is also not a valid argument. “It makes kids be good” is the worst of them all – if the only way you can teach good behaviour to your kids is by lying, then maybe you have problems…

So the kids are fully aware that Christmas gifts are from people to people, and fully involved in the whole project. They buy or make gifts of their own, and they help choose gifts for each other. (Ingrid is markedly better than me at predicting what Adrian will enjoy.)

And wrapping all the gifts is a big, messy, fun project of its own, that we also do together.

Ingrid lighting the candles for a Christmas dinner with her friend M.

Today we had our traditional Christmas baking day: lussebullar and gingerbread cookies. The gingerbread dough would not co-operate but stuck to the table all the time, so Eric was kneading in more flour and rolling it out again and again. Which the kids found incredibly boring – but they also didn’t want to miss a single moment of making the cookies, so they stayed and waited.

Close-up of an Advent star.

Getting ready to put up the Christmas tree.

We had our traditional annual Christmas baking day and made gingerbread cookies and lussebullar and mince pies. All turned out delicious, as usual: each recipe has been tweaked over the years until it is so good that we cannot think of any way to improve them. The gingerbread cookies are seriously spicy, the saffron buns plump and fluffy and flavourful.

We’ve gotten a bit bored with just making the same old same old each year, so the saffron buns get more and more fanciful in design, and the gingerbread cookies more and more decorated. This year’s bun designs included Minecraft-themed picks, axes and hoes. Adrian joined us in decorating cookies for the first time (it takes some strength and dexterity) and made non-traditional designs – such as green blobs, and using the glaze as glue to stick cookies on top of each other.

Dark chocolate brittle with chopped almonds, dried figs, cranberries and apricots, and mini-marshmallows.

Adrian at preschool, drawing and writing some important thing, surrounded by Christmas.