Christmas

We celebrate present giving on December 5th or 6th (never can remember which it is) anyway St Nicholas Day.

Patron Saint of choristers and pupils, though this was extended to all children.

This is a day purely for the giving of presents, which are never wrapped and I have usually given all of my ones before the date anyway.

Christ's Mass is celebrated appropriately and I keep the 1931 Coca Cola Christmas stuff as far from me as possible.

Our Christmas day follows a similar routine to a normal day.  Me and my parents open our presents before he gets up and then he opens his in the day time after his normal morning routine.  He enjoys ripping the paper off and playing with the packaging sometimes more than he enjoys the presents inside.  We do not have any relatives round.  He has his normal meals and snacks when he wants them but he also gets to pull a cracker with us.

He does not mind the change of decoration has he likes looking at the lights on the tree. He also likes finding and eating all the chocolate baubles we add to the tree on Christmas day for him.

Hi Harrysmum

We resist the pressure to have an ‘over-the-top’ christmas like most other people’s.   It can still be a special day, a special time, by doing the things your son really enjoys, whatever they are.  My brother has no interest in presents at all, opening them is a chore (even sometimes a source of stress) and he gets no excitement from seeing what’s inside.   He is happier if I just give him a new unwrapped book and don’t say anything.     He can get stressed by lots of other people around him opening their presents too, so we try and avoid that too.When I was little my parents used to give me my presents on christmas eve after my brother had gone to bed – this made it special and magical for me but avoided any stress for him.  Long ago our family ‘let go’ of  the conventional expectations of christmas and it makes life easier for us all.    My brother has no concept of the ‘make-believe’ of Father Christmas.   He enjoys recognising pictures of him as a character, and we leave it at that.  He likes looking at pictures of robins and reindeers. but having xmas cards on show all over the place can overwhelm him – he prefers having them in a pile and looking through them if and when he chooses to.  Coping with a xmas tree and decorations and stuff isn’t always easy (it’s introducing change as well as loads of visual overload) - if it’s not a good idea we don’t bother and we don’t worry if we’re the only house in the street without christmas lights in the window.  My brother likes carolsinging and going to the pantomime, and his christmas dinner, so there are special things at christmas that he can enjoy. 

Happy Midwinter Festival everyone, whatever and however you choose to celebrate

Hi - during the testing we are seeing some problems, one of those is that a user seemed to be posting from the wrong account. So in the short term I'm reposting these messages as quotes whilst we sort the account out - sorry about this.

Hi, we started with the usual Santa routine, and my son was more excited than the other 'normal' children, it took us a couple of years to understand why he didn't sleep on christmas eve, 1/2 hour if we were lucky, he was worrying about how a stranger (Santa) was going to get into our house, and that a burglar might be watching Santa to see how it was done.  So now Santa leaves things in our garage and doesn't come into the house and gives a secret knock to my husband to say that he has been so that he can bring the presents staight in.  As a child my parents left a sack at the end of my bed but nothing goes in my son's room as that is his sanctuary presents are left downstairs.  We stick to a routine on xmas eve, taking them to the cinema (a normal weekly occurence for them) and going to a KFC or McDs to while away the day and not get too excited.  My extended family used to all meet xmas eve to exchange presents but my son can't handle the excitement so we visit family individually and presents are exchanged on a small scale.  My son also knows what he is having as presents as the unkown parcel can keep him awake wondering what it is. Surprises really upset him.  He is 13 years old and still believes!  Hope this christmas is easier for you x

Hi.  Thanks for your advice.  Harry likes using visual aids too so I'll make the most of them I think.

Hi.  Thanks for the advice.  I love the sound of the scrapbook.  I think that will really help.  Harry doesn't mind opening presents.  In fact he loved it last year but then we had to put the presents away upstairs because he didn't like seeing them!  He just likes ripping the paper off I think. 

We have a Jesse tree, which is a Christian tradition I came across on another forum. Traditionally a Jesse tree is tiny but what we do is put our Christmas tree up, bare, and then we have an advent calendar with pockets and each pocket contains 2 decorations (one a little book with an angel on and the other a picture relevant to that day's jesse tree theme). I have 2 decorations because I have 2 children and it saves arguments!

If you're not religious, simply putting a small tree decoration in each pocket of a pocket advent calendar is a way to slowly dress the tree and gradually introduce more decorations and the idea of Christmas over the month of December.

We use visual supports to show routine for our son and they make a big difference.

I'm not sure what our son believes about "Farmer Christmas" as he calls him, so can't help much on that one I'm afraid!

Hi Harrysmum - the NAS info sheet is gr8  Try making a countdown calendar with pictures of what will happen each day - a bit like an advent calendar but all visible so he can see what's up ahead. If you have photos from previous years you could make a scrap book to look at and remind him what happened last year.  A friend of mine actually let her son wrap his presents with her as he hates surprises! 

Good luck

Hi harrysmum,

Hope other people will come along who have experience of this and can provide some help.

Wanted to pass on the link to our section about Christmas though - in includes some top tips from parents about dealing with Christmas:

http://www.autism.org.uk/christmastalk