S2 Ep 1: PREPARE (intention + inspiration)

I have loved Christmas since I was a child. The hopes of snow and flying reindeer, that special Christmassy feeling in the air. I still sense that as a grown up, but the festive season seems to come with a lot more pressure these days. This year, instead of trying to create the perfect Instagrammable Christmas, what if we just relaxed and focused on what really matters? Welcome to Season Two of the Calm Christmas podcast with bestselling self-help author Beth Kempton. This series is all about making the season special for less – less stress, less expense, less pressure… 

Episode 1 is on the theme of PREPARE and includes:

• A cosy introduction to The Calm Christmas Podcast
• Pondering the question of what Christmas means to you – and to me
• Some beautiful wintery words from some of my favourite writers and poets
• Journaling prompts for reflecting on your Christmas experiences
• Plus our weekly nature corner, recipes, wellbeing ideas and tips for getting ahead for Christmas

I hope this podcast will help you locate Christmas as an anchor in the stormy seas of winter in this world right now.
 
For more details of my book Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year go to bethkempton.com/christmas

Take good care,
Beth
(@bethkempton on Instagram)

Featured in this episode:

·      Good Hours by Robert Frost, in A Mind of Winter edited by Robert Atwan

·      We Can be Film Stars, Just for One Day by Sue Townsend in On Christmas: A seasonal anthology by Gyles Brandreth

·      Of Calcutta, Christmas and New Year by Suhel Seth in On Christmas: A seasonal anthology by Gyles Brandreth 

·      Introduction by Judith Flanders in Poems for Christmas

·      Christmas: A biography by Judith Flanders 

·      The Almanac: A seasonal guide to 2022  by Lia Leendertz 

·      Royal Horticultural Society’s Gardening Through The Year by Ian Spence

·      East Wind Melts the Ice by Liza Dalby 

·      Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year by Beth Kempton 

Transcript

0:04

I had for my winter evening walk No one at all with whom to talk, But I had the cottages in a row Up to their shining eyes in snow. And I thought I had the folk within: I had the sound of a violin; I had a glimpse through curtain laces Of youthful forms and youthful faces. I had such company outward bound. I went till there were no cottages found. I turned and repented, but coming back I saw no window but that was black. Over the snow my creaking feet Disturbed the slumbering village street Like profanation, by your leave, At ten oclock of a winter eve. Welcome to the Calm Christmas podcast with me, Beth Kempton. That gorgeous poem was Good Hours by Robert Frost, which can be found in the lovely anthology A Mind of Winter, edited by Robert Atwan. I thought we'd open with that because it gives such a sense of the light and shadow of winter. The contrast of cosiness and loneliness, the vibrant sound and the snowy silence. This podcast is not just about Christmas, it's about the whole season of winter and all that comes with that. And I invite you to join me as we walk through it towards the New Year together. Welcome to Episode One of Season Two: Prepare. This is the 'less expectation more intention' episode. I loved hearing from so many of you last Christmas, as we collectively enjoy the holiday season in a pandemic, separated from loved ones and concerned about what lay ahead. So I decided to bring it back for a second season this year to bring comfort and joy now the dark season is on us again. This series is all about creating a special season for less: less money, less pressure, less waste, and less stress, which hopefully leads to more joy, more memories, and perhaps even a little more festive magic. So I hope this new season finds you well and looking forward to a restful winter, and the twinkling lights of Christmas. From my end, I'm sending this out to you from the kitchen table of my home, an old stone cottage here in rural Devon in South West England. And I thought I'd begin with a few words from my teenage self dreaming of this very place."Im thirteen years old and stumble across a book my mum bought in a rare moment of indulgence. Country Christmas is a large, dark green hardback. A giant wreath of holly, ivy berries, bay leaves and tartan ribbons fill the cover. Every so often, particularly as winter closes in, I reach for that book and curl up to read all about Christmas in the countryside. Calm descends like a gentle snowfall on my early teenage years. Fast forward three decades and my mum finds Country Christmas when rifling through some boxes in her attic. Knowing how much I treasured it as a child, she sends it on to me. As soon as I hold it, and hear the spine creak for the first time in years, I am a teenager again, folded into a deep red armchair, dreaming. That's a little extract from my own book, Calm Christmas and a The book falls open at a double-page spread of a country cottage at twilight. Stone walls strong beneath a navy sky, fairy Happy New Year, and that single photograph I was talking about lights clustered on a tree outside, candles in every window in that book had held so much for me as a teenager. It was to welcome home the bundle of children jostling by the front everything I wanted for my adult life, a family of my own, a door. In bobble hats and winter coats, they are just back from sledging, I presume." solid old house to call home, warmth, comfort and safety. I treasured that book when my mum sent it over, and then I put it away with all the Christmas things. And then the pandemic happened and all sorts of things changed. And Mr. K and I decided to move house with our children. We found a keen buyer for our own house, but we just could not find the right place for us to move to. And then one day, just as we were about to give up completely an email popped into my inbox from Rightmove. I clicked on it and up popped a photo of a house that was a perfect match for the one in that Christmas book of all those years ago, down to the details of where the windows were located. Honestly, I couldn't believe it. I could almost hear the children knocking at the front door, calling through the When we try to describe our favourite parts of the letterbox for someone to open it up so they could come inside and snuggle up with a mug of hot chocolate. And guess what? We bought the house and moved in and it's our home now. I guess it's kind of perfect that the author of Calm Christmas should end up living in the house that she spotted when she was a teenager inside a book about Christmas. And in some ways that sums up my feelings about Christmas: twinkling magic at the darkest time of year, candlelight, and cosiness. But of course, it's also so much more than that. festivities, we often talk about the tangible aspects, like 'my aunt's roast potatoes', or 'the decorations on the trees in our town'. Of course, these are precious personal details, but I believe they sit on the surface of something more profound. Many of us have a generations-deep connection to the season, often shaped by childhood. When we think of Christmas, the image that we conjure up and the feelings that flood back, might just as easily reflect what we secretly longed for, as what we actually experienced. And the two might be very different. It's by reconnecting with what we loved or yearned for as children, that we can find true joy in the midst of the darkest season as adults. I have spent Christmas in so many ways, as I'm sure you have. And it's really interesting to think about the variations of Christmas that we have known. I've spent it with a heart full of anticipation as a child, warming my hands by a temperamental electric fire deep in the mountains as an exchange student in Japan, sunburnt on a boat crossing the Equator in my 20s. And most memorably in hospital giving birth to my eldest daughter. I have been overjoyed, overwhelmed, stressed, relaxed, cold, hot, happy, sad, feeling loved, feeling lonely, surrounded by children, thousands of miles from family, single married, before children, with children. With each passing year, I am more aware of how much I enjoy the simple life and a simple Christmas. And I've learned that a calm Christmas is usually a good Christmas, which leads into a happier New Year. And I hope that's what this podcast helps bring to you this year. When our children came along my husband Mr. K and I started to think more about what kind of Christmas we wanted to weave into their childhoods, and how we might craft a shared celebration that would leave us all feeling full of love, gratitude, and energy, not exhausted. It's really, really important to factor that in, I think. And ultimately, that meant us having some tough conversations, letting go of perfection and finding new ways to honour the most important of our two families' traditions. And we did it. And it has made such a huge difference. The first step was to strip it all back and discover what Christmas truly meant to us. And then to find ways to match that with the expectations of the friends and loved ones that we might see during the season. And we also wanted to preserve a calm space in the middle of it all, where we could rest and prepare ourselves for the year ahead. I don't know about you, but I have found this past year, absolutely exhausting. We have had so much to cope with, so much time together when normally we would have time apart that lets us kind of readjust and get things together to then make the most of our time together. But we have just been together a lot of the time this year. And in some ways that has been wonderful. And in some ways, it's been very trying. And I think that... well I know for a fact that so many others have felt the same. And I feel that perhaps even more than last year, this year, we need the chance to rest and recuperate. And so we had that conversation several years ago before the pandemic, but it has shaped things ever since, and the experiment that followed in my own family over the few years since Mr. K and I had that chat, became a calmer approach to Christmas, and the bones of my book, Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year, which if you haven't read it, I really hope you will. But that book was the inspiration for this podcast because there were other things I couldn't put in the book that I wanted to bring to life in this way from my kitchen table. So I hope you will join me each week between now and the end of December, as we explore how to make it more special for less. Like I said, less money. less waste, less pressure, less stress, and of course, how to take care of ourselves through this season. Just as there is no one shape of a family, there is no one way to do Christmas, yet we're repeatedly showing the same versions of a perfect Christmas online, on TV, in the press. And as a result for many has become a time of unrealistic expectation, and exhausting depletion. One thing's really interesting for me - last week I was looking at all of the Christmas magazines I've gathered up this year from the ones that came out earliest, there were ones out in September, and I compared them to the ones that came out last year in the middle of the pandemic, and there seem to be a lot more attention on taking care of ourselves in magazines last year, whereas this year, even though the pandemic is not completely over, we seem to have gone back to this idea of having a perfect Christmas. And there seems to be a lot less well being tips in all those glossy Christmas magazines and I don't know why that's happened, but it's really important that we keep thinking about ourselves and our health through this and don't drive ourselves crazy trying to create a perfect Christmas, maybe even trying to make up for the one that we weren't able to have last year. I actually think that secretly, loads of people loved not being able to travel last year, and not having to gather with family, when they've been doing that year in year out for a long time. And if that's the case with you, now's a really good time to think about what you really loved about Christmas last year, and how you can hold on to some of that this year, and not just dive back into old habits and ways. The truth is, our take on the festive season ebbs and flows as we move through life. As families come together and move apart. As older generations pass and new generations are born. We all come at it from our different backgrounds with our own particular ideas about how it should be and I'm certainly not here to give you one idea of what I think Christmas should be. It's absolutely about what you want it to be. But sometimes we're so busy, we don't stop to think about that. What do we want Christmas to be and how do we want it to feel? I wonder what Christmas means to you and whether that's what you want it to mean, or whether you long for something else. I spent some time this week flicking through a wonderful anthology of wintery words, highly recommend it. It's called On Christmas. And it's put together by Gyles Brandreth. And here are a couple of snippets that I'd love to share with you have very different experiences of Christmas. The first one is by Sue Townsend. The essay is called We Can Be Film Stars Just For One Day, and this is a very short piece of that essay from On Christmas. I grew up in a prefab with an asbestos roof and breeze-block walls. On winter mornings I would wake up, crawl from beneath my army greatcoat blankets and marvel at the frost patterns on the inside of my bedroom windows. It was so cold that, apart from the living-room where there was a coal fire, in every other room in the tiny house, our breath was visible. The cold was an icy cure that fell on us from November until April. Is it any wonder that I immediately felt at home when I read my first Russian novel? However, Christmas Day was quite magical. When my sisters and I were allowed into the living-room on Christmas morning it was like entering Aladdins cave. Streamers and home-made paper chains were hung from the ceiling, bunches of balloons were drawing-pinned in each corner, and a Christmas tree twinkled with glass balls and novelty ornaments. The sideboard was piled with plates of mince pies, sausage rolls, Coxs Pippins, tangerines and dates. The centrepiece was a home-made Christmas cake covered in white icing that my mother had fashioned to look like snow. On the left was an artificial slope that Santa and the reindeers appeared to be galloping down. On the right was a tiny church and towering over it a Jolly Snowman wearing a black top hat. The coal fire would be banked high and would be throwing out a terrific heat, but best of all were the presents. Each of us three girls had our own filled pillowcase and for a glorious half-hour we would unwrap them in a frenzy of excitement. Then, as the turkey cooked in the oven and the Christmas pudding was steaming on top of the stove, I would collect up my presents and take them to my icy bedroom, put them on my bed and gloat over them. I would always be given lots of books from the Woolworths Classic book collection I would start to read immediately, braking off reluctantly to eat my Christmas dinner, which we ate wearing paper hats from the crackers that had been placed beside our plates. I can actually relate to so much of what Sue Townsend is saying there and I wonder if if you can too, or whether your experience of Christmas was very different to that. And here's another short one, and this is by Suhel Seth in his essay Of Calcutta: Christmas and New Year, which I found absolutely fascinating. I have been to Calcutta before and I just this made me smile. There is vivacity to Calcutta, which no other city can produce. It is a city that was created for civil celebrations of almost every festival but it comes magically alive only during Christmas and New Years. The Hotels are decked with Nativity scenes and filled with gift-laden Christmas trees. The famed clubs of Calcutta open their hearts and kitchens to the Burra Din ka Khana and you meet people who you may have assumed have passed away. The lure of Calcutta lies in its sameness. Everything is the same. The guest list at the Kumar residence hasnt altered for the last fifty years, except for those unfortunate souls who have passed on tot he next world. The crooners have aged; perhaps even their voices, but never their passion or their joie-de-vivre. The chicken gold coin at the Saturday Club may be a tad greasier but it is served by the same waiter who attended your parents wedding. Such is the charm of Calcutta. So there are so many ways that we can remember Christmas and experience Christmas and I loved something that Judith Flanders had to say in her brilliant introduction to the little book Poems for Christmas. Judith Flanders has also written a

wonderful book called Christmas: 16:48

A Biography, which I highly recommend if you're interested in the detail of where our Christmas traditions have come from. Here's what she says in Poems for Christmas."A seventeenth-century booklet, Make Room for Christmas, drew its own picture of the very best Christmas, portraying it as a holiday made up of neighbourly visits, of apples roasting by a welcoming fire, of melodious Carrels, concluding, with a flourish, and so wel be higly piggy with one another. And in truth Christmas is all higgledy-piggledy, as our customs and traditions, songs and stories, family and friends pile up in our imaginations in a glorious jumble of Christmases past, Christmases fictional, Christmases on television and radio, the Christmases we have had, the Christmases we believe others have, and the Christmases we hope to have. I absolutely love that. You know, it feels to me like a giant permission slip to evolve Christmas into whatever we want it to be. We so often get bogged down and stressed out by the feeling that we should do things a certain way because that's how they've always been done in our family or in our town, in our country or, or in whatever group of people we identify with. But nothing has ever been done in a certain way all the time forevermore, certainly not anything to do with Christmas. Christmas is a work-in-progress, and we get to do our bit to shape it into whatever we want it to be for the sake of our sanity, and for the sake of the Christmas memories of those that we're going to share it with. Each time on the podcast, I'm going to give you a couple of questions to journal about. You can either pause the episode now and write a response or you can come back later when you've got some quiet time, but I really encourage you to take some time this week to answer the questions I'm about to share. Before we get caught up in planning and preparation, let's just take a moment to think about what we really care about, and set an intention for this holiday season. There are three questions this week. The first one is 'What did you love about Christmas as a child? And what would you like to replicate about that now?" That's kind of two questions. But that's the first question. The second one is also kind of two questions. "What did you not love so much about Christmas as a child, and what would you like to eliminate now?" And it could be that you loved everything about Christmas as a child but there's something about Christmas as an adult that you don't love so much. Absolutely feel free to write that down as something that you'd like to eliminate. And then thirdly, 'What kind of Christmas do you want and need this year?" Feel free to come and share your thoughts with me over on Instagram. You'll find me@BethKempton, and I'm going to be asking these kinds of questions over on my Instagram there as well. So you're very welcome to post in the comments if you feel like sharing. And now for our Nature Corner. So every episode I'm going to be taking a little look at what is happening in nature at this time of year. And this week we're taking inspiration from the lovely The Almanac 2022 by Lia Leendertz. It's now this has been an incredible bestseller. I think it's on about the fourth year now and it comes out every year, and shares all sorts of delicious information like tide times and about the stars and the sun and moon and about what vegetables are growing and all the kind of stuff - and I want to say this in the best possible way that I feel like I want to know, by the time I'm older. I don't know what 'older' means and I've got to an age where now I want to know that stuff now. But when I was a child, I thought "I'll know all that when I'm older. That's what older people know." And I don't know if it's because I live in the country or because I'm just consciously trying to slow down but I'm absolutely fascinated by the stuff in Lia's Almanac. I really recommend it and I'm actually giving away a signed copy of it along with a signed copy of my own book called Calm Christmas over on Instagram this week so if you're listening to the podcast as it comes out, the giveaway is probably still live. Be sure to come and enter over@BethKempton. Lia says this about November, she says, "Now comes the final fling of the forager, of mushrooms, rosehips, haws and sloes." In the book, she shares some of the seasonal things that are available to eat and enjoy at this time of year. And as I read this list, you might want to notice which words linger, which ones you really like the sound of or which make you think of a particular dish that you love, or a memory, and why not use those words as inspiration for wintery poem. So here's what we can look for... This is very much focused on the UK, but it'd be really curious to see if it's true for where you are as well. So in the hedgerows, woods and fields, there are wild nuts and fruits like wild damsons, crab apples, juniper berries, rowan berries, sweet chestnuts, sloes and walnuts. The funghi, we've got ceps and chanterelles, field mushrooms, horse mushrooms, common puffballs, parasols and shaggy ink caps. I don't know whether you can eat all of those, but it totally makes me want to make some mushroom soup. And then in terms of roots, we've got dandelion, horseradish, Jerusalem artichokes, lovage, wild garlic, those kinds of things, and then wild greens that you can pick and eat. Things like dandelion leaves and sorrel. And then from the seashore and rivers, the kind of fish and shellfish which are absolutely delicious at this time of year: Black bream, herring, oysters, turbot, mussels, skate, clams... so much. And in the kitchen garden, there's something about winter fruits and vegetables that really capture the season for me, the fruits, things like quinces, medlars and pears. For vegetables we've got cabbages, carrots, celeriac, chard, things like kale and leeks, onions, shallots, Oriental leaves, parsnips, potatoes, all these lovely Christmas dinnery things if that's what you like for Christmas dinner, pumpkin, spinach, turnips, I'm getting hungry, just reading this list. And then with herbs, we've got things like chervil, parsley, coriander, and then sage, rosemary and bay, the kind of herbs that I associate with Christmas decorations as much as with Christmas food. So think about those maybe write a lovely food-related poem inspired by them or maybe go and cook up something tasty. Now is a great time to order a seed catalogue and look forward to a cosy afternoon planning your garden for next year, or if the weather permits you can get busy in the garden. Author of the Royal Horticultural Society's Gardening Through the Year, Ian Spence, says "November can be a damp, raw month. Flowers might be scarce in the garden, but there are many berries, evergreen foliage, and trees with decorative bark to add interest on the dullest of days. You can warm yourself up by tidying the garden and preparing for the winter ahead." He also recommends that this is a good time to check up on your tools, make sure they will clean and ready for the winter, for the damp weather that's coming, catch up on greenhouse maintenance and begin planning your spring display. These are just some very practical things like it's a good time to have your lawnmower serviced. To plant bare root trees, shrubs and roses to clean out nesting boxes and put food out for the birds. It's also a good time for making good things in the kitchen with what's left in the garden. Of course, not that I'm always thinking about food. Speaking of which, now it's time for this week's Christmas recipe. In Japan, there are 72 microseasons which change every five or six days, and they give you an acute sense of the transient nature of things. And Liza Dalby who did a PhD on geisha and wrote the wonderful book Geisha has written another gorgeous book called East Wind Melts the Ice, and this book tracks the seasons through the year both in ancient China, where the calendar originated in Japan, in old Japan and also modern Japan, and in her home state of California. It's a fascinating book, and tucked into the back of the chapter on the particular microseason that we are in right now, In East Wind Melts the Ice she - Liza Dalby - puts forward this wonderful recipe for a tea blossom drink. Now from November the seventh to the eleventh, the microseason in Japan is known as tsubaki hajimete hiraku. Tsubaki is the name for camellia and this particular micro season is often translated as 'tea flowers bloom', which I think is really lovely. And this recipe for a tea blossom drink uses Commedia sasanqua, which is grown in Japan but also in similar climates, such as in California, and the name comes from the Japanese word sazanka, the characters for which read mountain-tea-flower, and Liza says "Pick a dozen or so fresh, fragrant sazanka blossoms. Put them in glass jar and cover them with white rum. Let them keep in a cool, dark place for a week, and you will have a ratafia, a French liquor usually made by infusing fruit in alcohol. This process works very nicely with blackberries and gin, for example. Because no sugar is added, the resulting infusion is not sweet like a liqueur. Better, it bursts with the essence of blackberry and summer." And obviously this version is a winter version."With fruit, the juice seeps out as alcohol steeps into the berry, so the drink is less alcoholic than the original medium. Flowers dont have nearly as much liquid, so the resulting liquor will be as strong as straight rum - but perfumed with the delicate fragrance of green tea. And I'm just thinking what a wonderful gift that would make for someone who loves tea, or perhaps loves Japan, or loves exploring wonderful things that come from the garden. And now we're going to talk a little bit about wellbeing. Each week, I'm going to share some simple wellbeing tips to help you through the winter. The very first one is to include yourself in the list of people who need care and attention this Christmas. It sounds pretty obvious but honestly tell me, how often did you properly take care of yourself last winter? Imagine the difference it would make to your festive season and to how you feel come January, if this year you were to ask yourself through November and December with care, allowing plenty of time for rest, reflection and delight. Now I'm saying this not because it's something that I always do or have always done. I'm saying this, as someone who knows this is absolutely what I need to do this winter. And I hope you will do it for yourself too. There are lots of simple but effective ways we can do this. Things like keeping up our regular routines like a weekly yoga class that tend to get dropped when either the nights draw or we are just knackered at the end of the day and we've been running around doing all the things that come with school at this time of year. Sometimes our weekly commitments to our own exercise get dropped, but it's great to keep that up. Or perhaps your Sunday afternoon walk or simple things like writing a journal in the morning or sipping camomile tea before bed. If you love to write, I really hope that you'll join me for my free two week writing course. I ran this last year. And we had just the most amazing feedback. So I've decided to run it again with all completely new content. It's called the Winter Writing Sanctuary. And it's a really beautiful place to come and spend two weeks, taking half an hour or an hour out of your day, at the end of November into early December, just luxuriating in a world of words. And you're very welcome to come and join me. It is free. You can sign up at dowhatyouloveforlife.com. Anyway, back to our wellbeing ideas. If you have children do consider reducing their after school activities at this time of year because it's... there's just something about the darkness and the weather, and all of the stuff they have to do often, of course, they're stuck inside their classrooms if the weather's wet during the day, and it can just be exhausting for them, and perhaps use the time to do more things together at home, which can be lovely for you too. One thing I started doing in recent years that has made a huge difference is batch cooking healthy meals earlier on in the winter, when I'm feeling more full of beans. I like to batch cook all sorts of things, curries and stews, and put them in the freezer so that we have good food available anytime. And then one thing that I think is really, really important is to stay in your own festive lane, to try to keep your attention on the good things unfolding in your festive season instead of being drawn too much into other people's social media feeds, and the Christmas they want you to think that they're having. Who knows if it's even true? Now is a great time to mark your calendar with self-care ideas, keeping your attention on your own experience, and perhaps signing up to a gentle free exercise programme like Couch to 5k, which is a brilliant app that can help you get running over a number of weeks. Explore other free ways to keep moving, to sleep better, to stay calm. There are so many apps out there these days. I adore Insight Timer, a fantastic app for meditation, Yoga with Adriene on YouTube is always a winner. The Calm app is fantastic. And of course, simply journaling. So many things that you can do to take care of yourself over the winter. I'll be sharing much more of things like this to do with food and nutrition all this over the coming weeks. But for

now, remember: 32:05

words, quiet, staying in your own lane, and giving yourself some attention this winter. And then one section of the podcast that was super popular last year, I'm bringing it back because it all helps to be organised. And that's our get ahead tips, because preparation can make all the difference to how stressed you feel. So every week, I'm just going to give you a few tips that are relevant to that week. So I really encourage you to try and listen to the podcast when it comes out because it's then going to be super timely. So for this week, it's really worth considering booking your online christmas food delivery slot. Things are gonna get pretty hectic, I think this year with everything going on so do try and book that early if you need to have it delivered. If you want to send Christmas post overseas, check the dates. I was staggered when I checked this for the podcast to find out that the last posting date for guaranteed Christmas delivery to the US and Canada from the UK has already passed this year. It was November 1st which is kind of crazy. I'm sure if you still post something it Who knows, you might be lucky and I might get there. But that will be something to do this week, get your Christmas cards in the post if you want to send them to your friends in the US and Canada. And of course, if you're not in the UK, and you're somewhere else, check the dates for your own Postal Service. This is a really good time to think about decluttering your home, especially of toys and clothes. Of course, it can take more than a week, but maybe plan to do one area of the house each week for the next month. And then when the time comes to decorate for Christmas, you're going to have a lovely clear canvas to work with. You'll have been able to donate stuff you don't need to people who would really appreciate it and of course, your children's bedrooms are going to be clearer of the stuff that they no longer need ahead of Christmas. So that's always a lovely thing to do. One thing I like to do at this time of year also is to spend some time thinking carefully about what I can do over the holidays with each person who is most special to me on a one-to-one basis. So what can I do with my husband on a new special evening out? or What can I do with this child? And then what can I do with this child that they would really love? And I think about it now because if it needs a ticket, now's a good time to book, or if it involves making something, then you might need to make a plan to get that made in time. And then the last get ahead tip for this week is to come up with a new kind of Advent Calendar, which you might use to delight yourself or to delight a friend and then maybe set aside some time in November to make it. I made a really lovely one with my children when they were younger, where we just got a huge stick from the garden, and a bag of gold coins, chocolate coins. And we used a needle to put some thread through the coins. And they very carefully and their wobbly handwriting wrote the numbers one to 24, one on each coin and then we tied them up onto the branch and hung that up over the fireplace, and that was our advent calendar, which really lovely. There are so many different things that you could do. But these things do take a little bit of time. So before December is upon us, maybe that's something to think about this week. So there we are for our first episode. I hope this has given you lots of ideas about how to look ahead to Christmas with less expectation and more intention this year. I promise it will serve you well. You've been listening to the Calm Christmas podcast with me Beth Kempton, I'll be back next week with Episode Two with the theme of 'less manic more magic'. Remember, it's really great to subscribe so that you don't miss any upcoming episodes and I hope you will tell your friends if you think they'd enjoy it too. If you want more inspiration and access to a very special free Christmas Care Package for me to you, then cosy up with a copy of my book, Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year: A little bit of festive joy which is available now from all good bookshops and for a peek into my own perfectly imperfect Christmas preparations. come and find me on Instagram@BethKempton. I would love to hear from you there. Enjoy preparing for a calm Christmas and a Happy New Year.