It had been an alright Christmas. Marianne and Eric had been married for seventeen years. They had four children. This was their seventeenth Christmas as a family.
The oldest child was Philip. He was sixteen. Marianne could tell, as he gulped down his Christmas dinner in a bit of a rush, that he couldn’t wait to go visit his girlfriend down the road. It was Christmas after all.
And he did. Straight after dinner, even before the clean-up, he was off down the road to see his girlfriend. Her family were very nice. They were having a nice Christmas too.
Marianne knew that Christmas could never be the same as it used to be. Gradually, over time, it would mutate into something different. Perhaps even something better. With four children, it was possible that Christmas would have to be shared between five families. But there would be compensations; grandchildren would appear and Christmases would get bigger and rowdier.
Marianne knew she simply had to let it happen. But for the time being, it made her feel a little sad. The old way of doing Christmas had quickly passed.