I have decided to post tonight for the GIFT Challenge and have chosen a Christmas tradition, peculiar to my family, and it is all about TOASTIES. No, not the cheese and ham type toasties, but those wonderful socks with slipper feet in them.
When my two daughters were small I used to put a pair of silly socks in their Christmas stockings. When they were tiny they were usually bright pink with pom poms on, or similar. As they got older and developed individual tastes so the socks took these into consideration and one Christmas Helen got Winnie the Pooh socks and Kathryn, Mickey Mouse. They entered their teens and the tradition continued, though now we had grown into Toasties or Totes as some brands call them. These now had thicker soles so they were almost like slippers with little suction pads on the bottom.
The years went by and we had Toasties adorned with Harry Potter, Take That, Winnie the Pooh (he persisted for a long time), striped ones, luminous ones - the list was endless. They lasted exactly one year so each Christmas the previous pair was ready for the bin.
The girls grew up and reached their mid-twenties and one Christmas I thought they would not want 
these socks any more and did not buy any. I had, foolishly, assumed that they had outgrown them. On Christmas Day all the presents were unwrapped and exclaimed over and enjoyed when I realised there was a silence and both my daughters were looking at me in a very odd way. 'What's the matter?' I asked. 'Mum, you've forgotten our Toasties. Where are they?' My reply that I didn't think they would want them any more was greeted with total outrage. 'But we ALWAYS have Toasties at Christmas'.
OK, well I learned my lesson. My girls are now heading towards 30 and I am still buying them Toasties every year. And you know what - I love it. I am going out this weekend on the hunt and see what I can come up with. To paraphrase that wonderful opening of Little Women:
'Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without any Toasties'
