We know you love an uplifting real-life story, so put the kettle on and enjoy our festive tea-break trio — quick reads to put a smile on your face
Dreaming of a white wedding
I heard my dad call out: ‘OK, you can come down now!’
Dad loved Christmas, and he insisted on getting the tree and lights set-up in secret. That way he could watch our faces as we came down the stairs.
I inherited his love of Christmas and kept the lights tradition with my son Jamie.
‘Your house is such a grotto!’ my neighbours would say.
I always had the best decorations in the area.
Then one December when I was 42, I received a mysterious Facebook message.
Do you remember me? asked the sender.
It turned out it was Stephen, an old friend from when I was a teenager.
We got back in touch, and he popped over for a coffee and a catch-up.
My nervy rescue dog Candy rested her head on his lap and I thought: He’s a keeper.
Stephen and Jamie got along great too.
And a year after he’d first got in touch, Stephen joined us for Christmas Day, bringing a big sack of presents for us to open.
‘There’s one more in there,’ he said when we’d unwrapped the rest.
I poked my head in, but I couldn’t see anything there. When I looked up, Stephen was down on his knee with a ring.
‘Will you marry me?’ he asked.
I cried tears of delight.
We planned our wedding for 11 December — four years after we first got back in touch and three years after the proposal.
‘How about we do a Christmas-themed wedding?’ I suggested.
‘That’s an amazing idea!’ Stephen said.
We booked our reception at a hotel, decked with tinsel and Christmas trees.
We decided on traditional turkey and a pavlova for the wedding meal, and our favour boxes were in the shape of Christmas crackers.
Then the night before, came the icing on the cake.
I glanced out of the window and shrieked: ‘Oh my God, it’s snowing!’
To my delight, my wish came true. I had a true white wedding.
Married life was bliss, though sadly Dad passed away four years after the ceremony.
But we made sure Christmas was still extra special, and last year one of Stephen’s gifts to me was a locket with a picture of my dad.
From Nicola Law, 50, of Lisburn, Co Antrim
Just being my ’elf!
I folded my arms across my chest as the little ones ran around me.
‘I don’t want to go back inside, Miss,’ a voice piped up.
‘Ah, but you must,’ I replied. ‘Or I’ll have a word with Santa. Nobody is supposed to know, but… I’m an elf.’
The child’s eyes widened.
‘Wow,’ he whispered.
Since I’d started working in schools 10 years earlier, I’d been sharing stories about the North Pole.
Each year, I accidentally let it slip to one or two children in the playground at lunchtime, and by the following day, all the kids were talking about it.
‘Elves just wear normal clothes, although from the start of December, I must get into the spirit and wear my elf clothes,’ I explained.
I had a different outfit for every day of Christmas.
Sometimes on playground duty, I recounted little tales about what was happening at the North Pole.
‘The reindeer are being moody today,’ I’d say. ‘And one of the other elves put a whoopie cushion under Santa’s bum!’
The kids erupted in laughter.
There were always those who didn’t believe, but I told them stories about what happened the night before in the workshop.
The parents usually backed me up.
Last year, the kids said they would stay up to see if they could catch me helping Santa on Christmas Eve.
‘I’m ever so slightly too tall for the sleigh,’ I told them. ‘I stay back at the North Pole to make hot chocolate for all the elves and Santa for our Christmas delivery afterparty.’
The stories I tell get more elaborate each year, and I get so into it that sometimes I even believe it myself!
But I love keeping the magic alive.
From Colly Orton, 47, of Hemel Hempstead, Herts
Crafty Christmas
As I hung the last ornament on the tree, I stood back to admire my handiwork.
Perfect, that’ll cheer him up, I thought.
A week earlier, my husband Alan had undergone heart bypass surgery after a sudden heart attack.
It had been terrifying, but he was now on the mend and coming home in time for Christmas.
‘Ta-dah!’ I said, as Alan walked through the door later that day. We both loved the festive season.
With Alan’s health scare behind us, we tried to continue with our everyday lives.
But something had changed.
‘I think we should retire, make the most of life,’ I said to Alan one evening.
That next week, we both handed in our notices.
As we settled into retirement, I found I had more time for my hobbies.
I’d always been into crafts, and one afternoon as I was having a scroll through Pinterest, I came across a beautiful Christmas tree.
I looked closer and realised it was intricately carved out of a book.
‘I could do that,’ I said.
After watching a tutorial, I had a go.
‘You could sell that!’ Alan said, when I showed him my project.
Soon, I was spending hours creating Christmas trinkets — red poinsettia leaves adorning a homemade wreath, a Christmas tree made out of beads and old bracelets, and sweet little ornaments from acorns I collected on walks.
‘It’s so relaxing to just sit and play with all the sparkly bits,’ I said to Alan.
Then I got into card making. I’d chop up bits of old Christmas cards and use them to make new ones.
Word soon got round the neighbours, and every few weeks a thud would sound from our letterbox. People were collecting their old cards and gifting them to me to recycle into new ones.
‘It’s like Christmas every day here,’ Alan would chuckle.
Soon friends and family were asking me to make different bits and bobs — a card for someone’s sister or a wreath for their mum.
This Christmas, I’ll be doing my first craft fayre at my grandchildren’s school, so I’ve been building up stock to sell.
I’ve been told I’ve got a talent for it. But I think the talented ones are the surgeons who saved my Alan’s life and gave us the perfect retirement.
Jacqueline Gray, 61, of Beverley, East Yorkshire