By Kevin Hillier
Like a knife-wielding zombie, Christmas has snuck up on me this year. What about you? I am not sure if it is because our house no longer has the Santa Claus factor to deal with. Spoiler alert – all our family now knows Santa is a highly paid executive of the credit card planet and lives in the land of the never-never pay it off people.
It is mid-December – yet it does not feel like the festive season. I wonder if that is because those lines between retail seasons have become as blurry as the ones between sporting seasons. The Werribee Cup at the weekend made me think early November, not December.
Without getting into a climate change debate of epic proportions, the transition from spring to summer has hardly been noticeable except for a few days of heat. I still have plenty of use for my windcheaters and jackets.
There are a sprinkling of houses with extravagant lighting displays, but that tradition seems to have become a victim of rising power bills. Who can blame even the most fervent Christmas fan for trimming back?
The supermarket promotional pop-ups and mini-collectibles have not given me a whiff of frankincense or the taste for candy canes. You could once rely on the seasonal finish of your favourite television or radio shows to signal the coming of the holidays, but they all wind up so early these days that it doesn’t cause a blip on the yuletide radar.
I am happy to say Santa does not seem to have lost his appeal, judging by the reaction I saw at the A-League last weekend. The kids were very happy to see him – and the lollies he was handing out.
As we embrace more politically correct wording in advertising, mentions of Christmas and the like are fast disappearing. ’Tis the season to be jolly, all right – jolly careful what you say, who you say it to and what they were thinking when you said it.
I think that correspondence course in mind-reading and social etiquette for the new millennium I saw advertised might be the go for my present to myself for this year. Happy holiday, indeed!
