If you want to maximise Christmas cheer, tree size is very important.
Get one that has to be bent over at the top to fit in the house. Get it six weeks out and layer it with as many strings of lights you can get your hands on. Make it a fire risk if possible. If you're not using two overloaded power boards you're not trying. Remember, the tree is the centre of all yuletide magic and hype. It's very powerful. Even at my age I find myself sneaking out to the lounge in the middle of the night just to stare at ours in the dark. Feels so good.
It is important to force your kids to watch a Christmas movie every single night of December. Sure, The Santa Clause 1, 2 and 3 stink, Santa Claus: The Movie blows and Scrooged is Bill Murray's worst movie, but that's not the point.
The moral of these films is finding Christmas spirit and that's what you want to drill into your children. If you get sick of the bad ones, there are some great Christmas movies out there, too. Arthur Christmas, Fred Claus, Nightmare Before Christmas and the greatest of all, Elf.
Plus, if you get sick of the Father Christmas ones remember Gremlins, Edward Scissorhands, Home Alone, Batman Returns, Lethal Weapon, Die Hard and Die Hard 2 also count.
If it has snow and a Christmas tree in it, it's a Christmas movie and you need to be watching it now.
Christmas is all about food. Kids love eating so it's a great way to really juice them up for the big day.
Obviously, the feast on the 25th should be a gut-busting spread that knocks everyone out by mid-afternoon. As they say, if you're not sitting on the toilet at 3am holding your stomach in agony, you didn't eat enough. But "buildup" food is important too. You need to be carving up a giant ham in a wet bag from December 1 until it's fully rotten and stinking the fridge out in mid-Feb.
Finally, Christmas-time is mostly an exciting countdown to the 25th. So you'll be wanting to run as many simultaneous advent calendars as you can. We've got five on the go for the kids, two for me, two for the missus and one for our dog Colin. That's about the right ratio in a family of four.
Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. Having children is amazing because you get to live the magic all over again.
If you want to push it through to the next level you have to foster that Christmas spirit. You need fuel. To reiterate, the key things are a massive tree, a dangerous amount of lights, rotting ham, cheese-ball movies and songs so bad you wouldn't listen to them any other time of year. Put the effort in now and your offspring will grow up a yuletide psycho just like you. Merry Christmas, one and all.
