Christmas for me will always be candy canes, gingerbread houses and burning puddings. Every year my mum burns it, and every year we eat it anyway. Christmas is the floor rustling with torn up wrapping paper, hardly ecologically sound, but so satisfying in the way that only things that are bad for the environment can be. Christmas is my birthday. Christmas is feeling like a child all over again as you rustle around in the foot of stockings and giddily eschew alcohol in favour of kiddie champagne and sit with your little toddler cousins instead of the adult table. My little pony is infinitely more engaging than shop talk...
I seem to have missed the rush of christmas this year. It's already the 10th and i haven't really made inroads into a long list of gifts, we haven't got a tree, i haven't been watching christmas movies incessantly (although that will all be rectified when i watch love actually tonight, i think). I think i've been too preocuppied with thinking about my birthday to think about christmas (my birthday is christmas eve). I've been trying to plan a dinner party and have met with opposition at every turn. But, i realise, it’s just a short fortnight until i turn 19. And a short fortnight and a day until it is christmas, and the whole manner of lovely things that that brings.
I love that feeling of christmas. You know the one, underneath all the materialism it's that warm-hearted fuzzy sort of thing related to being selfless and trying to make other people smile. Because, really, big gestures are all well and good, but it's the ones that really have thought behind them that make the most impact. For the christmas of my 18th birthday my sister gave me a scrapbook she had made herself, with little bits of coloured paper, postcards and lined, notes that she had scribbled in every other corner reminding me to 'smile!' or 'call cally!', stickers and ribbons... It was beautiful. I thought, at the time, too beautiful to write in. But i took it away with me and filled it with thoughts of other cities and places, stark morning light and the hallowed peace of urban evening.
Often ripping open that package is enough. I've never seen anything so happy-making as the sight of little dimple-cheeked cousins and brothers tear apart painstakingly wrapped gifts with such excitement and fervour, their eyes sparkling. Often the gift within is by the by, what is more exhilarating, more fun, than the present itself is the opening up. The journey is better than the destination, or words to that effect.
And then there's the food. My mum always puts on a spectacular feast, a mix of the traditional christmas foodstuffs like pudding (burnt, of course), ham, turkey, potatoes, roast veg... and the australian - seafood so fresh it could almost leap off the table, bushels of lemons, frozen dacquiris, ice cream, asian salads, all things cold and wonderful. We all sit around and we eat. and eat. and eat. Is there anything quite like Christmas to make people forget their differences and have a nice meal?
I may not have bought any presents yet, or put up a christmas tree. I may be working so hard in the next couple of weeks that i won't have time to think about such silly season staples as egg nog or mistletoe. But waking up this morning i was hit by the thought that christmas is a mere couple of weeks away. Christmas! Oh how marvellous.
All i want to do is wear red and green, eat buckets of candy canes and wrap up presents. And what do i want for christmas? I'll have to get back to you on that one.. :)
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