The Father Christmases in Your Life

"Ho, ho, ho" the man in the huge red suit says loudly, his face aglow under his red cap. His white wihskers twitch as he chuckles. Your child stares in amazement at the large brown sack draped at the man's feet and at the golden statues of reindeers strung across the floor. A huge Christmas tree stretches loftily behind the man and the branches are decorated in a sparkling adornment of tinsel and ornaments. This is the epitome of the year for your son or your daughter. All year your child has been told to be good and promises await in an abundance of presents under the tree this year.

Have you ever wondered at the above scenario? No, not because of Santa, who is a figment of imagination. Because of the importance we place on Santa and how important such an event becomes to us and our children. Huge promise is wrapped up in his arrival, yet he is a fleeting once a year event.

Do you have other Santas in your life? Maybe it's a dear uncle or a wonderful friend you see occasionally and you love seeing these people so much that you base your whole life around the when moment--when you next see them. Maybe your children do this too, in a friend who visits every three months for a barbeque and brings them gifts and plays with them all day. They are hyped up when they hear of the friend's arrival. But it's fleeting contact. Or maybe you live all year for your once a year holiday that is a brief couple of week's long and then gone.

Perhaps you could try the following exercise, which I did myself once at a personal development training course: Draw a circle to represent yourself on paper and then draw circles to represent each of your key relationships. If they are close relationships, then draw the circles close to you, even interlinked. Make the bubbles bigger or smaller to depict the importance of the relationship to you. This exercise may be easy for some of you to do and others of you may struggle. Take a step back and have a look at what you see. Do you agree with the picture? Are there people who are emotionally distant you would like to see closer? Or are some of the people who are close, perhaps even enmeshed with you, too close? It is a personal exercise and only you know if you obtain any insights from doing this. It was helpful to me when I did it. I have never taken a step further and asked, are some of these people Father Christmases in my life. Something to ponder on perhaps. Perhaps there are some everyday people we could appreciate more and maybe others we could give more time to but currently all but ignore.