There’s a lull between footy finals advertising in September pushing gambling, meat pies and beer, and howzat cricket promos pushing gambling, fried chicken and beer, when brushcutters and lawnmowers get a look in on our screens and in our newspapers, but soon after that, it’s Christmas that rules.
Happy smiling faces on people who just love being around each other every second of the day, and who have boundless amounts of wonderful food that none of them have slaved away cooking, let alone paid for, and none of whom will have to wash up afterwards.
I know this because if they did, they wouldn’t look so happy. The dishwasher will never take all those pots, and Christmas pots are the worst to wash.
I know they are paid actors, not because that’s who usually stars in advertising, but because their hearts appear to be filled with joy. If you’ve just slaved away for days preparing the perfect meal then your look is one of relief or disappointment, depending on the result, as you bring it to the table, not one of joy.
I’ve had many types of Christmases over the years. As an ‘orphan’ living overseas and joining with strangers, friends or distant relatives in a foreign environment, then on the flip side of the coin in a pudding, offering that foreign environment to ‘orphans’ in Australia far from their own families.
Then there is my regular habitat, either with my immediate family or the in-laws, but I’m yet to have a Coles or Woolworths Christmas, let alone an IGA one. Ours are probably more Aldi. Good, different.
Christmas can be perfect and joyous, especially with small children, but outside that half hour of present opening, in my experience, it’s mostly a group of people coming together and trying not to walk into the unlocked toilet in someone else’s house without knocking first.
It’s trying to help without taking over or accepting help without people taking over.
It’s offering to do the washing without people being embarrassed about their smalls, or larges, whichever the case may be.
It’s trying to relax and unwind while others are getting frantic around you or trying not to get too frantic while others relax and unwind around you.
It’s trying to agree on Christmas protocol, such as when to open presents — before or after breakfast, or in some cruel dimensions, after lunch.
I remember one branch of the family wanting to hold Christmas in a park one year and another branch thinking that was akin to cancelling it altogether.
I remember my wife, Clare, a vegetarian, spending hours cooking the perfect turkey with home-made stuffing and gravy one year, and people just eating it and not bowing down to it like the second coming.
I remember my dad, an avowed carnivore, one year reluctantly eating a vegetarian dish and praising the chef, Clare again, with a sheepish, “It wasn’t terrible”.
The food, the presents, the bringing people together, who often only gather once a year or once every two years, can make Christmas a bit like a stable, but without the son of God sleeping quietly in the middle of it.
It can be more like several determined drummer boys hyped on red cordial, but with only one drum.
But it is a chance to aim for that Coles or Woollies Christmas.
The opportunity might be a little forced sometimes, but it does bring us together to catch up on the past year and remind us that it is important to maintain those links, and by extension, love for each other.
And, if we can’t quite attain that level of harmony and joy we see in the ads, if your life is a little different to that, if you have to settle for an Aldi special buy-type Christmas, then remember, they’re usually surprisingly good, or at least not terrible.
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