Five Free Things To Do With Your Family This Weekend (Including Having a Chilled Christmas!)

DO and EVENT Walk out for Winter
The Ramblers Festival of Winter Walks has been running for over 25 years and aims to get more people walking through and exploring Britain’s dramatic, bare landscapes. This is a great time of year for a stroll; wild animals and birds are more visible and all that tramping keeps you toasty! There are thousands of free walks to choose from; burn off those mince pies and turkey! Download a rather beautiful free Walking in Winter guide here, which includes recipes by Meera Sodha, tips for taking winter photos, walking routes and wellbeing tips. Until January 5.

DO Calm It Down
Fancy a chilled Christmas? Let us help you out with some ideas. Amanda Williams tells us about how her family found new meaning in the season. Spoiler alert: fewer gifts, new traditions, spread the present opening. Perhaps you might find inspiration in other country’s festive traditions – find a round-up of ways different cultures celebrate midwinter here. Or celebrate Yule in traditional fashion by going on a morning yule log walk and decorating it. Reading a wintery book together could help you find your calm. We’ve rounded up some of our favourites here.

If your family is anything like ours, Christmas fever is starting to inch from bright-eyed merry to full-on crazy. It can feel impossible to keep things calm and bright. We love these gentle tips to soothe the frenzy, while these techniques from around the world bring some new ideas to the parenting party (we’re going to try the finger holds idea which can be used wherever you are.

Finally, there are some great tips for making your Christmas less overwhelming for an autistic visitor here or for your own child with sensory issues here.

EVENT Solstice Parades
Cornwall’s Montol Festival is held yearly on December 21 in Penzance to celebrate the midwinter solstice. The town’s population dresses in mock formal clothes and masks and ‘guises’ – performs plays, skits, songs and dances. Guising guilds roam around pubs, waving animal skulls on poles, electing a Lord of Misrule and celebrating ‘old Christmas’. Take part in the Children’s Sundown Procession, then watch the burning of a sun effigy and finish with a serpent dance!

And, of course, the streets of Brighton are lit by hundreds of hand-made paper lanterns and throb to the sound of samba drums at the annual Burning The Clocks parade. Defiant locals bring light and noise to their city on the longest night of the year, then fling their willow-and-parchment lamps on to a huge bonfire on Brighton beach. It’s a fiesta, but also a chance for contemplation as participants are invited to think about their community, the events of the closing year, and which direction they’ll choose for the upcoming twelve months.

MAKE Crafty Gifts
Many schools break up this weekend. Keep the peace in your household and create some extra presents at a gift-making session. We love the ideas collected here: tie dyed bookmarks, hand-printed cards, personalised notebooks and washi tape wooden bracelets. Alternatively, Martha Stewart’s ideas are, of course, chic, clever and stunning – try making gingerbread snow globes, colourful printed totes and hand-decorated biscuit tins

EVENT Frozen Stones
Less frenetic than the summer event, Sunday’s Winter Solstice at Stonehenge is a magical celebration of the shortest day. There is free, managed open access to the site; a rare chance to get among the stones and witness them up-close. Get there well before sunrise and join the druids, revellers and curious watching the sun rise. Avebury is a slightly less crowded option, while the ceremony Orkney’s Standing Stones of Stenness is even more relaxed. Alternatively, why not visit a stone circle new to you

What we’ve been reading this week:
99 Good News Stories You Probably Didn’t Hear About in 2019
“Maybe, like us, you read or watched the news this year. It didn’t look very good out there. Countries on the verge of collapse, people taking to the streets, some in peaceful marches, others in extinction rebellions or violent clashes with security forces. Populism and and bigotry rearing their ugly heads, worming their way into the algorithms, power corrupting absolutely, the powerless ignored or locked in cages on the border…

That wasn’t the whole story though. There was other news this year, stories of conservation, health, rising living standards, tolerance, peace, cleaner energy and environmental stewardship. Unfortunately that stuff didn’t make it into our news feeds and that means that what we saw on our screens in 2019 was not the world. It was a negative image of the world, in both the photographic and tonal senses.

Read 99 inspiring and heart-warming stories from around the world here