Editor’s Comment: Here’s to a real family Christmas

Christmas time with Justin and Christine Clark from Brinsworth and their quad daughters Darcy, Elisha, Caroline and Alexis.

Christmas is all about children - and in this happy household it’s festive excitement times four.

South Yorkshire family ready ‘four’ Christmas

Justine and Christine Clark are the lucky - if exhausted - parents of four energetic toddlers, quads Darcey, Elisha, Caroline and Alexis.

Today’s lovely photographs show the cute siblings happily posing and playing in their Christmas jumpers as the family prepares to celebrate.

And in a world where TV programmes celebrate the “world’s most expensive Christmas” and where show-off parents take to social media to post pictures of their spending excesses as they prepare to shower babies – yes babies too young to want anything other than wrapping paper on Christmas morning – with hundreds of gifts, the Clarks’ attitude is both refreshing and admirable.

Sensibly, they don’t intend to splash out on mounds of the latest toys and gadgets for two-and-a-half-year-olds who really will be happy with whatever they get from Santa on Christmas morning. The girls will get one main present to share and a few little gifts each.

Not only will they be delighted with those carefully chosen presents, but they will also learn some of the valuable lessons their parents are keen to teach them; it’s good to share and that ‘I want’ doesn’t always get. They will also appreciate the delights of playing together, making their own fun.

By all accounts, the girls are already very sociable, and not just with each other but also enjoying the company of other children they mix with.

Let’s face it, bringing up a family of four will be an expensive business. Feeding and clothing this brood and providing the basics will stretch the budget, never mind giving in to the normal whims of children who, naturally, want whatever the latest toy or gadget is.

It’s also nice to read that the Clarks are treating their little girls as individuals, rather than a fabulous set of dress-up dolls who are kitted out in identical outfits like the children of celebrity parents who wheel out their real-life accessories at every photo opportunity.

Instead the girls are encouraged to develop their own personalities, tastes and interests.

Last Christmas was marred by illness. Let’s hope this Christmas is extra special for the Clarks.