People are driving around with reindeer antlers on their cars, grown men are in shopping centres with fake white beards and my neighbours have started their annual 30-day stretch of being nice to each other – either Christmas is days away or marijuana has been legalised in Victoria.
Once upon a time, a young Dom Ciconte, full of optimism and hope, thought that Christmas morning was the Holy Grail.
Us Ciconte kids would battle through school, Mum’s torturous Saturday ‘clean-up days’ and the utterly ridiculous, unnecessary daily demand to have our beds made up, all for that sprint to the lounge room on December 25th so we could un-wrap our presents.
My mum was once a brilliant gift-buyer. She would somehow know everything I wanted before I even had a chance to throw around hints. Transformers, Lego, Super Nintendo games, a new footy – that was my childhood in a nutshell.
Unfortunately, my memories of Santa were not great. The guy gave us average gifts every year, almost like he was trying to make my mum and dad look even better.
A wooden dinosaur that I have to assemble myself? What the hell is this guy smoking? Mum, next year, tell Santa not to bother.
Christmas day would only get better from there. We would travel to our big family lunch, go wild with our cousins, get more presents from relatives and literally overdose on happiness.
And then we went and got old. What a stupid thing to do.
The 6am sprint to the lounge room has been replaced by a 10.30am stumble out of bed. The toys replaced with CDs, DVDs, clothes and vouchers. The overdose on joy replaced by an overdose of food and my Nonno’s wine.
No matter your religion or belief, we have a great excuse to come together, eat, drink, argue and look back on the year.
Even though it’s not as fun as it use to be, Christmas is what you make of it.
Just don’t force me to make another wooden dinosaur.
Merry Christmas
