'Tis the season

So, it has been over a month since my last post. That's pretty shameful, but I guess that time flies when you're having fun. I finished my second year of Uni, got some pretty good results, spent a couple of days at the beach, have been to a handful of birthday and Christmas parties, and turned 21 yesterday. I'm having my party on Saturday night, which should be really fun. Then it's Christmas next week (although I'm still not entirely sure how it got to be this late in the year so fast...), for which I'll probably be working lots of shifts and somehow managing to buy the presents I've got left to get.

I have mixed feelings about Christmas. It used to be my favourite time of year - probably because it's so close to my birthday, but when I was younger I used to get so excited about Santa, presents and lots of interesting food. Even though my family wasn't super rich, my Dad always got really excited and that was kind of contagious. Then, when I was 15 and working in a supermarket, I realised that that sense of pending excitement I had was strangely missing as I worked double shifts up until the Big Day. Same thing the next year, and the year after that (except by then I was working at a cafe, which was much less harsh than Coles had been). The third year that I worked in the lead up, I was so blase about Christmas - until Boxing Day, when my Dad played these old tapes of Carols for the first time that season, which made me come home.

The year of my Gap Year - so the Christmas just after my 19th birthday - was exciting for me again, with the only difference being that I wasn't working, and had time to actually get excited. Then last year, it was back to that sense of indifference that I'd gotten used to in my teenage years.

This year, is different again. I'm not really indifferent, or being a total Scrooge like I was last year, but it doesn't feel like Christmas yet. It's really surreal. Still, I am looking forward to the food, and the family. Even though Santa feels like a relic of my childhood, he is still found in various places around my house at the moment (including in one particularly scary incarnation that reminds me of Chuckie from Child's Play, and which my Mum and I have petitioned in vain to have banished from the house). I decorated most of the tree this year, with great results - it's entirely decked out in red and green.

I think that as I've grown older, even though I've lost that sense of excitement, but I've gained an appreciation of the traditions that make this time of year so important. It really is about family, friends, food and stories that are shared amongst everyone. As much as Christmas has become one of the most commercial, capitalist entities of our time, those values (I think, at least) will always be around. And that's why Christmas is special.