Byline: Allison Pearson
TIS the season when we celebrate a baby and his mother. Nutty vicars may tell us we can't sing O Little Town Of Bethlehem because it's no longer relevant to life in Jesus's birthplace, but the Madonna and Child remains one of the most moving images ever created. Mary cradling her newborn son is the logo of love without end.
You need faith to believe in Christ, but anyone can place hope in the power of a mother's love.
Faith in motherhood took a bit of a battering in 2008. Every time you picked up a paper there was yet another story about a negligent harpy who was doing something unspeakable to her kids. Just this week, a mother was cautioned by police for injuring a toddler while drunk in charge of a buggy. And they're not easy to manoeuvre even while sober.
Another mum seemed to embody the grotesque vanity and selfishness of the age when she sold her baby twins for [pounds sterling]9,000 to pay for liposuction. Get rid of the fat, get rid of the kids; it was all the same to her.
Back at the start of the year, there was Anne Darwin who cruelly conned her two sons into believing that their father had died in a canoeing accident. Then there was Joanne Hill, jailed for life for drowning her disabled daughter Naomi, aged four, in the bath because she was ashamed of her child's illness.
If you thought that was hard to match for barbarity then you hadn't reckoned on the mum of Baby P who spent hours exchanging flirty banter in internet chatrooms while her boyfriend used her little son as a punchbag.
Karen Matthews displayed a similarly devastating lack of maternal concern.
Police wanted Karen to see kidnapped Shannon as soon as she was found, but the family liaison officer says Karen insisted on stopping at a sandwich shop because she was hungry. 'I had to hide my disgust,' recalls DC Christine Freeman.
Disgust is the correct reaction. If we judge mothers harshly as a society then perhaps it's because instinctively we know what lifelong damage a bad parent can do. A social worker predicted that Matthews was a problem because she was 'unable to put her children's needs above her own'.
When I heard that, I thought of the millions of mums who don't make the headlines. The ones who put their own needs last and get precious little credit for it. At this time of year, it is the lesserknown Mother Christmas who slaves to create magical memories for her family.
She will buy all the presents, resourcefully make the budget stretch so each child will be delighted on December 25.
And who gets the credit? A big fat bearded loser in a scarlet babygro.
Thank you, Santa! For me, there is one truly outstanding mother of this year. She's not a celebrity.
I know that whatever fame she has she would give back in an instant because of the agonising way it came to her.
Melanie Jones, 42, was a mum of two in Croxteth, Liverpool, waiting for her 11-year-old son to get home from football training.
Then she got a call saying Rhys had been shot. Moments later, Melanie was in a pub carpark. One eyewitness described the way Mrs Jones knelt on the floor, her trousers soaked in blood.
Cradling her boy in her arms, she kept saying: 'Stay with us, son. Stay with us.' Melanie and her husband Stephen, a retail manager for Tesco, had given their sons a stable, happy upbringing. It had shielded the boys from the gang culture around them. Until the day poor Rhys got caught in the crossfire between the Crocky Crew and the Strand Gang. ADISTRAUGHT Melanie Jones publicly challenged the parents of her son's killer.
'They must know what their kid is up to or don't they care? I knew where my son was. I knew where my sons were all the time. If they were going out I knew where they were and what time they'd be home. Their parents don't care. I blame the parents.' Melanie spoke for all those mothers who have reared their young with love and care, only to see them threatened or destroyed by kids who had neither of those. No politician has ever been so brave or dared to say so much.
Melanie Jones and millions of mums like her are holding the line for the ordinary strengths and virtues that have underpinned family life for centuries, but which are all too often overlooked or taken for granted by a State that thinks it knows best.
I salute them all. This Christmas it has taken a mother who loved and lost her child to inspire us, against all odds, with hope..
Rebecca's the real sports superstar
AND the winner and runner-up of the BBC Sports Personality Of The Year Award are two blokes who do their sport while sitting down.
Chris Hoy and Lewis Hamilton seem like perfectly nice chaps, but theirs was undoubtedly a great victory for couch potatoes everywhere.
Meanwhile Rebecca Adlington (left) the mermaid with an outboard motor who left the opposition gasping like stranded goldfish came third. Forgive me, folks, while I set fire to my Christmas Radio Times in protest. For a 19- year-old girl from Mansfield to pull off two gold medals in the pool, never mind set a world record, was astonishing..
Becky would have become the first swimmer to win BBC Sports Personality since Anita Lonsborough in 1962, but it was not to be.
They gave it to a chap on a pushbike with a bedpan on his head.
The pity is that Becky is such a great role model for sports-shy British girls, who will be wondering what exactly you have to do to beat the boys. 'I'll look a bit minging next to Lewis Hamilton's Pussycat Doll girlfriend,' she said before the ceremony.
Well, love, you didn't. You looked fantastic. And when Chris's Lycra shorts are just a teeny footnote in history, Dame Rebecca Adlington will still be making waves..
It's a dumb wrap
An internet gift company is offering a presentwrapping service so shoddy that women will believe their menfolk have taken the trouble to pack the parcel themselves.
Firebox.com is paying 20 of its male forklift truck drivers to wrap presents as quickly as possible, using cheap paper unevenly cut with nail scissors and ugly brown duct tape.
The charmingly named 'Cr*pWrap' service is meant to display all the authentic traits of the male present-wrapper. Steady on, what crude gender stereotyping is this? In my experience, if you actually manage to pull off a festive miracle and get a man to do some wrapping, chances are he will suddenly turn into a perfectionist Origami bore.With their spatial awareness and vast experience in making model airplanes, men are perfectly capable of wrapping presents beautifully.As in most domestic areas of life, they just pretend to be clueless so they can get away with doing naff all..
Strictly striptease
'WHY are the judges so mean to the boys?' demanded my daughter, after the Strictly Come Dancing semi-final turned into the kind of farce you would expect from a 4th Form drama production.
'Because they're wearing clothes,' suggested her little brother. And he's not wrong, is he? Rachel (right) is so desperate to win that she treats every episode like a round of strip poker. At the present rate, she'll be dancing the final in just 6in of dental floss. Let's hit the judges where it hurts.
Vote Tom!
All together now ... I'm Dreaming Of A Tight Christmas
IN VIEW of the seasonal doom and gloom, I thought it might be time to update a well-loved Yuletide classic for these credit-crunch times. Please feel free to come up with your own verses.
With sincere apologies to Bing Crosby.
All together now: I'm dreaming of a tight Christmas Just as the house and car must go With the frozen robin and children sobbin' To hear the bailiffs in the snow..
I'm dreaming of a tight Christmas.
Just as the lights begin to blow With the fusebox smoking, and children choking And grillpans dropping on my toe.
I'm dreaming of a tight Christmas With every shopping list I write There is one less X-Box, and no hot sex frocks, And far less Turkish in Delight..
I'm dreaming of a tight Christmas Why did our Woolies have to close? So it's tinfoil llamas and used pyjamas And Rudolph minus the red nose.
I'm dreaming of a tight Christmas.
How long does Uncle plan to stay? So it's warm, flat Fanta for sodding Santa, Whose sleigh has just been towed away.
I'm dreaming of a tight Christmas, But not as tight as yours, old chaps, You banking bosses brought all our losses So may all your bonuses collapse..
