There’s nothing like Christmas, Boxing Day, New Year’s Eve and Australia Day for stirring up a blather of confusion, embarrassment, noise and boredom for everyone involved.
The whole thing becomes a collective marathon of madness, which finally ends when everyone falls breathless over the finish line, ready for a welcome return to the tedium of work.
The timing of these events, all within a month of each other, needs serious rearrangement.
It’s all very well for Mr Albanese to call a special meeting on cost-of-living solutions. Still, an emergency caucus on summer holiday bedlam is equally as urgent to address the sorry state of the nation’s mental and financial wellbeing.
I would suggest we don’t just stop at moving Australia Day to another date. Christmas should be moved to July 1, when we can all celebrate the end of another frantic business year with a good old family-friendly sales frenzy paid for with a nice fat return from Taxman Santa.
December 25 can then be returned to the dwindling numbers of devout church-goers who can be left in peace to quietly celebrate the birth of all things good and innocent in the world, free from the noisy poison of filthy lucre.
The new year can be celebrated with our Chinese population any time between late January and early February, which gives plenty of time to plan summer holiday fun and dress up as a snake, a monkey or a dragon and terrify the children.
Spreading madness evenly throughout the year should return some sanity to the weeks between December and February when we are all far too busy fighting the annual mosquito wars.
Last year, for the first time in my life, I caved into family demand and spent Christmas in Queensland.
For those about to get married, here’s something to remember: you are not just becoming one with your beloved. You are also entering the embrace of another family. So, depending on numbers, that is double or triple the family madness.
This Christmas involved spending five days with about 30 people spread across seven decades and four states, some of whom I had not seen for 20 years and a few I had never met at all.
Lunch was a chaos of food queues, tears, spilt drinks and conversations at 90 decibels. As for the kids, they had a great time watching Bluey. Adults suffered the unspoken guilt of not helping out in the kitchen. But have you ever tried to find champagne flutes and dessert spoons in somebody else’s kitchen? All this was conducted at a dripping 35°C with 85 per cent humidity.
So, I had more than a few reasons to look forward to going home after Boxing Day.
Number one reason was the chance to spend five days entirely alone as the Chief Gardener stayed in Queensland with her sisters. For an introvert who has rediscovered the joys of oil painting, this was the best Christmas present ever. I could get up at 5am and paint; I could skip lunch and paint; I could paint all night and go to bed smelling of gum turpentine. I left the house twice — to get Weet-Bix and champagne. I had one job — watering the house plants. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until day number five that I realised the term ‘house plants’ included some spiky and climbing things on the front doorstep. After five days in the summer heat with no drink, they looked decidedly droopy and earthbound.
When the Chief Gardener returned, she was so overjoyed to see me and admire my new series of abstract expressionist landscapes that she never mentioned the house plants. She was just deliriously happy. Looking back, it was the gum turps.
