Candy canes, Christmas crackers, trees, baubles, puddings, turkeys, ham, crowns and carols! I am always so over-the-top excited about the holiday season. I’m freaking Buddy the Elf! When the decorations start appearing in the shops, I’m so happy to see them. I have no time for holiday haterz. What’s to hate? It’s a season of all the best food, friends, indulgence and fun, and you get to put up a giant, spangly tree in your house. That, to me, is a recipe for a good time.
I choose to embrace the Christmas tradition, because that’s what I was brought up with, but that doesn’t mean you won’t ind something perfect for Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or, hey, even Festivus in this chapter.
I totally have my parents to blame for my Christmas glee. They kick ass at Christmas, and made it incredibly awesome for me and my brother and sister when we were growing up. We always had a gigantic tree, with a train chugging around the base, and little Christmas towns set up on every available surface throughout the house. Weeks of reading Christmas books before bed – classics like How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Polar Express, The Nutcracker and a beautiful copy of The Night Before Christmas – would get us so excited for the big day, you could feel the magic in the air. On Christmas Eve we would hear sleigh bells jingling outside our bedroom, and I am lucky enough to have had midnight Santa-sightings on at least two occasions. We always left out cookies (and occasionally a beer) for Santa, and carrots for the reindeer. To this day my parents maintain that he sends us presents every year, and I have no reason to suspect it’s not true.
The holidays, to me, are all about embracing the spirit of the season. Like anything, you can choose to focus on the cruddy parts, the commercialisation and forced social interaction, but I prefer to squish that too-small paper crown onto my head and enjoy the occasion. Even now, Christmas Eve is my favourite day of the year – it’s when that crackle of magic is the strongest in the air. Now let’s cram some ice cream between two mince pies, make our bread pudding taste like eggnog and do this thing right!