This year, the Christmas present our family is most anxiously awaiting is the birth of a new baby boy to my nephew and his wife.  ‘Lucky’ as we are calling him for now, is due tomorrow.

“Have you had that baby, yet?” I say to my nephew’s wife.

“Not yet!”

I imagine having to roll her up like a tube of toothpaste until young Lucky pops out all bright, shiny and minty fresh.

As far as we know, his real name is yet to be decided.  At a recent family confab (around a  table littered with pizza, Fashionista Barbie, and big-sister-to-be bling) we favoured a name that meant ‘Lucky’, but sounded something less like a member of the Sicilian mafia. Google was consulted but, sadly, Acarapi, Eyolf, Faust, and Feliciano just didn’t seem to roll off the tongue.  (Actually Feliciano rolls off the tongue just fine, but comes to a screaming halt when you add Stevenson to the end of it.)

There was some half-hearted support for Felix, and I’ve warmed to the name. Any name with an ‘x’ in it has to be cool.  Sadly, my nephew can’t quite get the image of Felix-the-Cat out of his mind so I’m thinking Felix may not make the cut.

On the way home in the car, great-grandma-in-waiting whispered to me, “When’s he due?”

“Christmas.”

“What are they going to call him?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Well, I hope they don’t call him Jesus!”

I’m guessing that’s at even longer odds than Felix.

When my friends Warren and Kirsty were expecting, they called their baby ‘Monty’ as a kind of a gag until they decided on a real name.  But nine months is a long time and by the time their little girl was born it was inconceivable that she could be called anything but Monty. I heartily approved, although I don’t envy them having to ‘fess up’ to the inspiration for that particular moniker!

Given the ‘Monty’ experience, I reckon we should just make it easy on ourselves and call the child Lucky. After all, it’s Christmas for Christ’s sake (literally!). We have turkey to cook, ham to glaze, potatoes to Dauphinoise and plum pudding to drown sadistically in brandy custard. We’re simply not going to have time to come up with another name between now and New Years.

And let’s face it, Lucky will be lucky.  He’ll be born into the heart of a happy, loving (if slightly weird) family. He’ll have two great, outrageously intelligent parents, a very bouncy, blingy, beautiful big sister with a formidable wardrobe full of fairy costumes, a doting grandma, a devoted great-grandma, bucket-loads of uncles and auntses and cousins of various ages, sizes and postcodes, and a rather eccentric great-aunt who inexplicably calls his father Space Monster and spends a great deal of time writing cranky rants on the internet in the vain hope she can make the world a slightly better place for him and his sister.  He’ll also have enough soft toys to populate a small African nation.

Lucky will be born to a life where he’ll be safe, warm, well-fed and well-educated.  He’ll live in one of the most peaceful, secular, wealthy, and democratic nations in the world.  How lucky is that?

He’ll never have to beg for a bicycle, a text-book or his next meal – although if he wants a horse, he’s going to have to learn to grovel.

Sure, as he grows up, he’ll have moments of difficulty, sadness, grief, ill health, and heart-break. But for all that, by the mere chance of being born into this century, this country and this family, he’ll have more advantages than it is fair to ask Santa for.

I hope he grows to appreciate his luck and to use whatever talents he has to make other people’s lives ‘luckier’ – even if only in a small way.

So, yes! Let’s just stick with ‘Lucky’ and, when he’s old enough, we will sit him down quietly and sensitively explain why we named him after the cat in the ’80s sit-com, ALF.  I’m sure he’ll understand ….

With muchlove to Lucky, his parents and Miss Bling – 

Aunty Chrys

Nicholas Stevenson (aka Lucky Monster) – finally born …. and named: