I am one of the many people for whom December brings a battle; trying to convert Scrooge into Santa’s little helper has never been easy, and rarely successful.

How do you explain to someone what Festive Spirit is and how to feel it? It’s just there, like feeling hungry or sleepy. How can you make them feel that same tingling in your tummy and spontaneous smiling that comes just from hearing a Christmas song on the radio, in November?

“Christmas is just a commercial excuse to make people spend their money and boost the economy”
Well, at least the economy gets a boost once a year! Let’s face it, a third of annual sales are made in the Christmas period, think how depressed the economy would be without it! and what are you saving your money for anyway?! you can’t take it with you when you time is up!

“It’s just a day like any other”
How many days a year do you wake up at the crack of dawn because the excitement in your tummy is just too much to contain, have a champagne and smoked salmon breakfast in your pyjamas, open an abundance of presents and gifts from the people that love you, dance around the kitchen to Christmas music, making a feast with your family, eat until you are fit to burst and then spend the afternoon on the sofa like a beached whale splitting your sides to BBC comedy?

“Christmas shopping means fighting with people and pushchairs in crammed streets to buy overpriced presents that you HAVE TO get for someone…”
It means wandering the cobbled alleyways illuminated and cheery with Christmas lights and music, trees and decorations; all wrapped up against the winter chill, breathing clouds of hot breath into the frosty air. Stopping to sip on mulled wine and hot chocolate, and say hi to all the people that despite living in your village, you don’t see from one month to the next.

“A Christmas tree? It’s a real tree that you savaged pulled from the earth!”
Okay, fair point, and calmly accepted. We’ll have a plastic one!

“Christmas is a sacred religious festival, you don’t even go to church…”
Very true. Admittedly, my Christmas is not about church and remembering the real meaning of Christmas, as it originated; but we each find in it what we want to find. For me it’s a time of traditions, family, friends, fun, travelling from our distant corners of the globe to meet together and share love and laughter.

“Christmas is a time for children, we don’t have any…”
Oh yes you do! You may not have fathered any children, but each of us has one… inside! If you aren’t capable of getting in touch with your inner child, just once a year, along with everyone else, with the excuse of Christmas time, then you have more serious problems than a Christmas list to face!

There comes a moment when even the most convincing Christmas fairy, like myself, just shrugs and gives up. The time spent in trying to convert the anti-Christmas-squad, is time I could be investing in wrapping, decorating, shopping, singing… or even packing. Yes, packing, my case. For my very first family Christmas on a Spanish island ;-)

After all, Christmas – like life – is what you make of it.

We wish you a moltohappy christmas!! :)

dw