Erma Bombeck once said “there’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.” In many ways I agree with this statement. There is something beautiful about a child’s innocent belief in Santa and the goodness of people. Unfortunately, as we get older, many people become disenchanted with the holiday season.

I am most definitely not one of those people. It doesn’t bother me at all the Christmas decorations make their way into Supermarkets in October and I love hearing carols play on an endless loop throughout the city. Come December 1^st I’m like a red and green hurricane that blasts around the place leaving presents and infectious joy in my wake.

To help those of you who are more Scrooge than St Nick, I have created a sort of ‘bucket list’ of things you’re never too old to at Christmas.

1. Get your photo taken with Santa. Pretending, even if just for a moment, that you still believe in Santa goes a long way towards filling your heart with cheer.
2. Buy and decorate a real Christmas Tree. Forget that the pragmatic side of you doesn’t want to vacuum up the dropped needles every other day, and focus only on the glorious smell of pine that’s infiltrated your house and your heart.
   
3. Go to your local ‘Carols by Candlelight.’ Eat, drink, sing and be merry. There is something very beautiful about kinder kids dressed as reindeer singing ‘We WISH you a MEry CHRIStmas!’ with emphasis in strange places.
4. Make a sandman. The fact that Christmas falls in the middle of the Aussie summer will not stop being sad. Half the Christmas carols we sing don’t make any sense in context (‘Walking in a Winterland’? No, you’re waking in a 45 degree heatwave).  So, even though we don’t get to make snowmen as kids, we can still go to the beach and make a pretty decent Sandman instead.
5. Go and look at the Christmas Lights. My favourite part of Christmas Eve as a kid was when my family would bundle into the car and drive around at night looking at all the light displays in our town. All the Dads in our street would compete to have the best display and it was such a beautiful tradition.
6. Watch Love, Actually. For the ladies, there’s Liam Neeson and for the men there’s…well…Liam Neeson. I’m sure there’s a plot in there somewhere but I just keep getting distracted.

There are 364 other days in the year for us to be busy, stressed, workaholic, alcoholic nutcases, but on Christmas, we should forget everything but our families and allow our inner children to run rampant once more.

– by Blaire Gillies