I Will Always Love Christmas

i will always love christmas. i will always love the way they make me feel inside. like the year has stocked up the logs for burning in a fireplace deep within me. and only at the end of the year the toasty feeling starts to warm my heart and all of its icy defences. everything becomes roasted chestnuts and golden brown marshmallows. everything becomes soft snowflakes and the welcoming glow of fairy lights dusted across decorations of pine green wreaths. everything becomes sweet smiles and open arms.

i will always love how christmas makes everyone look instantaneously more jovial and cheery. how suddenly everything is about giving back and charity. how the good seems to suddenly emanate from every direction. how we are suddenly more grateful and thankful. how we suddenly find love and adoration in the smallest things.

maybe it’s because christmas has been always been a moment of truce. it has always been a happy moment, regardless of whether it has any religious significance or not. it’s where mummy and daddy put aside any domestic straits or disputes and suddenly its about making the days happy experiences for the kids. and we forget the pain for a moment. amid the christmas carols on the radio, the decorating of the house, the laden tables of roasted ham, chicken, turkey, roast beef, gravy, cranberry sauce, minced pies and mint sweets, the christmas tree half-buried in gifts from friends and family finally gravitating back to their loved ones, shopping centre Santa and cuddles in the living room, we forget the hurt. we suddenly remember that we have each other.

i used to wrap christmas like a snug blankie when i was a child. i got letters from Santa, with their corners bitten by Santa from the North Pole. i’d adamantly claim that i had been good and pick my favourite toy and try to stay up when it was christmas eve. i’d strain my ears hard trying to listen to sleigh bells in the night. but i never caught him. but it really didn’t matter when i wake up the next day and find that the presents got under my tree anyway. one christmas my family’s car broke down on the way home while we were getting a late christmas gift for our mum, but we didn’t care, we were all smiles and giggles as we pushed the car till it started and hid mischievous, furtive grins when our mum griped out how late we were and where we had been. my friends and i used to plan routines off of The Little Mermaid and perform them in front of our parents during Christmas Day dinner. we’d play in the room till we were tuckered out and had to be carried to bed.

i will always love christmas. cause i will always hold these memories attached to them, stapled like a scrapbook in my mind, with bits and pieces PVC-ed all over the place.

to me christmas is a moment when i can step into the past. i don’t know exactly how to describe it but it is this event every year that does not take place in a particular time and place. it is this moment that i keep returning to. a moment which always contains the same feelings. and i wonder – maybe this is what we’ve made christmas out to be. where we keep putting up the same christmas decorations and carrying out the same rituals and behaviours. christmas is not a timed event anymore. it is an event that we keep reliving. but it’s not a reenactment though – it’s more than that. it’s like we step inside this event and then out of it every year, that we keep revisiting an event that ties in every year of our life neatly together. sure, you can classify many other memorable events as staples, ties – but to me, christmas has always been it. the neat little bow to my present (pun [maybe] intended).

and maybe for all these reasons, and so many more, i will always love christmas.

Photo credits: http://weheartit.com/entry/46063207/via/ashleic