A baby's first Christmas is a genuinely magical thing, and I say that as a man who sells sweary baubles for a living. There's a small new person in the house who has no idea what's happening, will remember none of it, and will still somehow receive more presents than everyone else combined. The tree gets an extra ornament. The photos get taken. And in thirty years' time, somebody will lift one particular bauble out of a box wrapped in tissue paper and go quiet for a moment.

That bauble is the whole assignment. Here's how to get it right, what to write when you give it, and, because I know who's actually reading this at 2am while feeding someone, a word about what the parents deserve to find on the tree too.

The bauble itself

The one that gets kept is personalised. Name and year, on glass. Our Personalised Baby's First Christmas Bauble was our single biggest earner last Christmas, and I don't think that's because of anything clever we did. It's because a baby's name and the year, in nice lettering on a proper glass bauble, is the entire sentiment. It doesn't need a joke. It's the one ornament in the box that isn't decoration, it's evidence. This happened. They were this new once.

It comes gift boxed, which matters, because this is the present that makes the grandparents cry, and you want a moment of ceremony before the crying starts.

What to write in a baby's first Christmas card

The card that goes with the bauble carries the message, and the trick is remembering the baby cannot read. You're really writing to the parents, and to the adult that baby will one day be, reading it back. Some options:

1. Happy first Christmas! You won't remember this, but everyone else will never forget it.
2. Welcome to your first Christmas. The rules: nap through the Queen's speech, cry during the film, get passed round like a trophy. You were born ready.
3. Your first Christmas! May your nappies be dry and your parents' batteries included.
4. Merry Christmas, little one. You're the best present anyone got this year, and I include the air fryer.
5. One day you'll read this and know that at your first Christmas, you were the absolute centre of the universe. Nothing has changed, love, Grandma.
6. Happy first Christmas. You've already mastered the two festive essentials: sleeping anywhere and being adored.
7. To the newest member of the family: thank you for finally taking the attention off the rest of us.
8. Baby's first Christmas, parents' first Christmas without a lie in. Merry Christmas to all three of you.

And now, the parents

Here's the thing nobody puts on the mantelpiece. While the baby is having its first Christmas, the parents are having their first Christmas as a catering and sanitation operation that runs on ninety minute sleep cycles. They will smile through it beautifully. They are also, quietly, running on fumes.

Which is why, and I say this with love, we make fillable baubles for adults. They hang on the tree looking festive and innocent, and they contain a drink. The Let Christmas Be-Gin one says what it needs to say, and the Emergency Christmas Spirit bauble is, for the parents of a newborn, less a decoration and more first aid. Break glass in case of teething.

So the correct baby's first Christmas gift, for the record, is a pair: the keepsake for the baby, hung high, treasured forever, and something restorative for the grown ups, hung slightly higher, out of reach. If the household's sense of humour has fully collapsed into survival mode, there are also sweary baubles, in packs of four, which I'll leave there without further comment.

The rest of the first Christmas family

First Christmases turn out to be a category. Newlyweds get the Mr and Mrs 1st Christmas bauble, and yes, the dog gets one too: the Pet's 1st Christmas bauble with paw prints, which I predicted nobody would buy and have been proven magnificently wrong about every single December since.

Timing, briefly

Personalised things need making, and December post needs a miracle. Order the bauble in October or November, write the card properly (pen, no drafts, say the thing you actually mean), and pair it with something from the funny Christmas cards shelf for the parents, perhaps something gin adjacent, to complete the set.

One bauble for the memory box. One for the survivors. That's a first Christmas done properly.