This years version is exactly the same!!
It’s about this time of the year I start to wish things were different. For a start off, a different hemisphere sounds pretty good to me – until I hear how many of the Thanksgiving Revellers are now ill with Covid and that London is shut down for weeks. But honestly guys – spare a thought for those of us who have to have Christmas in summer. Not only do we have to do all the normal Christmas nonsense but we get to have our summer holidays and wind up the year as well. All the Northerners do is a bit of Christmas shopping, a bit of decorating inside and decide what to eat for the big meal. In this hemisphere you tend to go shopping in shorts and refuse to leave the airconditioned mall until you have no money left and/or they’re closing down. The Christmas decorating becomes not just a tree but your entire front yard – and house and inside, and as if that’s not enough, you also have to decide where you’re going to go for your summer holiday. A decision that invariably involves travel and packing and more food. And you are not alone. The other 3 million people who have to fit in their summer holiday in the 6 weeks the kids have off school will be camped beside you or in the very long queue of cars waiting to get off the motorway. When you get home the perky pine tree you left is now a brown stick and the pine needles are all over the floor. In a fit of pine stubborness, they refuse to go up the vaccuum cleaner and you kneel for hours picking them up one by one. If you are particularly unlucky, someone (also known as a thief) has come in and nicked all the new stuff you got for Christmas and haven’t played with yet. The thief knew you were on holiday because the lawn wasn’t mowed and whoever it was looked in the window at the brown stick covered in decorations and worked out the odds of you flying home from the North Island in time to catch them.
Of course, in the Southern hemisphere summer once the madness of the main event is over all you have to look forward to are Boxing Day sales, barbeques, sitting on the deck with a nice cool drink and reading a book.
Merry Christmas wherever you are, and my best wishes for a new year without heartache and sorrow.
Robyn Anderson 