Playing with the wrapping paper

This afternoon my sister, niece and nephew popped round for a gingerbread reindeer and a cup of tea. We spent a couple of hours eating, chatting, wrestling, making up really poor reindeer jokes and building a slightly stale IKEA gingerbread house - it's not just the furniture that comes flatpacked.

But the highlight came right as they arrived. Nate, who'll be three in January, was particularly looking forward to seeing my Christmas tree and was all ready to help decorate it. Unfortunately, I'd spent Saturday evening hanging baubles and coaxing fairy lights into life, and I was concerned that Nate would be disappointed that there was nothing left to do.

I needn't have worried. As I opened the front door, he raced past me into the lounge and all I heard was "Oooo!!", the surprise and excitement evident in his voice. It was a beautiful moment!

I know that a lot of people think Christmas is just for kids, and I think it's almost impossible for us adults to rediscover that simple, instinctive sense of awe that Nate expressed this afternoon. With age and maturity we have to embrace new levels of Christmas complexity - taking a hit to the wallet, shouldering more responsibility for making sure others are able to enjoy the celebrations, being sensitive to the challenges that this time of year brings for many.

And in the quest to reconnect with the real meaning I'm not sure it's necessarily as simple as approaching Christmas like a child. We all know how easily children get distracted by sparkly things - Nate's reaction to my tree this afternoon is a brilliant case in point - and we need to make sure that if we're going to try and see Christmas through a child's eye we don't do the spiritual equivalent of ignoring the present and playing with the wrapping paper.