Notes from the Season: The Selvedge Team – James Hayward, Partnerships Lead

A Smaller Christmas

This year we’re spending Christmas in France, and for the first time in ages our gift pile will be small enough to count on one hand. The decision wasn’t a grand manifesto, just the reality of a car boot with room for people, coats and a battered travel blanket, not much else.

My five-year-old sealed it with his letter to Father Christmas: “I don’t need many gifts this year because I’m going to France.” There it was, in pencil and sincerity - the quiet truth that place, time and company can feel like presents in their own right.

Freddie's Family Rug, mended, 2022. From 'On Mending', Selvedge Issue 109, Rise Up 

I’ve worked with textiles long enough to notice how they shape a season more gently than objects do. When you pare back the parcels, what remains are the fabrics that frame the days: a scarf that’s done three winters and one careful darn, two stockings that come out of the drawer smelling faintly of cedar, a tablecloth that has seen cranberry crescents and candle wax and keeps going.

Even our packing list is textile-first: warm socks over extra gadgets, a shawl that can be a pillow, a square of cloth to wrap whatever homemade biscuits survive the ferry. With less to carry, rituals come forward. We’ll still hide an orange in each stocking and read the same story under the same blanket, but the pressure to produce and perform is softer. France helps: there’s the early darkness, the mountain air, the simple pleasure of hanging wool to dry by a window that silvers at the edges.

Photo credit: Advertising Archive. Featured in 'Tiptoe: Christmas Stockings', Selvedge Issue 26, Gold

If the year has taught me anything, it’s that attention is a kind of gift, given slowly and received without fuss. Cutting back also sharpens my gratitude for the things that truly last. For Selvedge that means the work of telling stories that outlive the season, and celebrating makers whose skills anchor communities.

London Textile Month reminded me how alive this world is - exhibitions packed with knowledge, conversations that stitched together curators, collectors and craftspeople. As we look toward 2026, our hope is for deeper partnerships - relationships built with the same care a maker brings to a seam.

If you still need a present that carries on giving, consider a Selvedge gift subscription. It arrives quietly through the year, encourages reading rather than rushing, supports the magazine’s mission, and creates no single-use waste - just pages to keep, lend, and return to.

Whether your Christmas is abundant or pared back, I hope it is restful, warm and threaded with meaning. We’ll be raising a mug to all our readers from a snowy corner of France, grateful for your company, and looking forward to another year of making, mending and telling the stories cloth can hold.

Written by James Hayward

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Image Credits:

Lead: Portrait of James Hayward by Alun Callender

All further images as credited in photo captions.