My favourite things about Christmas

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Emily Gravenstede is 11 years old and has lived with PAH since she was three. She looks forward to Christmas all year, and here she explains why.

Christmas is my favourite time of the year. I love everything about it, but here are my top five favourite things about it:

Music: When I hear Christmas songs it makes me think of Christmas and I feel excited and happy and I cannot wait for Christmas to come. I like all Christmas songs, from pop songs to carols. I love playing Christmas carols with our school band and playing Christmas carols on my violin at home.

Films: Christmas films are always so festive and jolly. Some of my favourites are Elf, The Grinch, Arthur Christmas and the Nativity films. I can watch these over and over again and I don’t get bored of them. My Dad won’t let me watch them until it’s December though.

Decorations: I always enjoy decorating the house for Christmas. We decorate the Christmas tree, make paper chains (that end up really long!), and we place fairy lights and other different decorations around the house. We make a Christmas wreath out of berries and different types of foliage and hang it out on the front door. Sometimes we even make a second wreath which we make out of small, brightly wrapped chocolates which we hang up inside. It looks really cool (and tastes great too!)

Baking: All-year-round baking is fun, but the things we bake at Christmas are always the most exciting and help to build up the anticipation for the big day itself. I make things like brownies dusted with icing sugar, a Christmas cake, biscuits in festive shapes, a yule log, different types of sweets (which are always my favourite!) and mince pies.

Scroll down for Emily’s favourite Chrsitmas biscuit recipe!

Christmas Day: I love waking up on Christmas morning and I always wake up REALLY early. I wake my sister up and we run downstairs as fast as we can. When we get to the sitting room it is full of presents and our stockings are full of gifts from Santa. Mum and Dad get up and we all open presents. One of the things I love the most is seeing all my family (grandparents, aunties, uncles and cousins) and eating Christmas dinner together and then opening even more presents.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!

Emily’s favourite Christmas biscuit recipe

(Shared by her mum Lorna)

‘VERY EASY CHRISTMAS BISCUITS’

Ingredients:

75g (3oz) soft butter/margarine
25g (1oz) icing sugar
115g (4oz) plain flour

1. Place the butter in a bowl and mix until it is soft
2. Sift in the icing sugar and stir it in until smooth
3. Sift the flour into the bowl and stir it in with a wooden spoon. Then use your hands to squeeze it into a dough (Emily likes this bit!)
4. wrap the dough in cling film and put in the fridge for 30 minutes
5. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C (350 F, Gas Mark 4)
6. Dust your work surface and rolling pin with a little more icing sugar and roll out the dough until slightly thinner than your little finger.
7. Cut out biscuit shapes. We have some Christmas shaped cutters. If you don’t have those, you could do circles and then decorate with icing pens to make them look like snowflakes or baubles!
8. Place biscuit shapes onto a lined baking tray and bake for 10-12 minutes
9. Once the biscuits are cool you can have fun decorating them. You could use icing or even melted chocolate (Emily really likes chocolate on top of biscuits!). You could also decorate with little sweets.