by Little Strawberry

Created on: August 25, 2008   Last Updated: December 06, 2008

When I was very small, on Christmas Eve, me and my sibling would each take a spare pillow, and sit it on the end of our beds. In the morning, our pillows would be full of presents, and we'd wake up at 2am and kick the pillows repeatedly until they fell off the beds. Then we'd drag them into our parent's room, and proceed to have a grand show-and-tell of "Look what we got for CHRISTMAS!". After about five minutes of which, it was announced that it is the middle of the night and sleep is very, very important.

A few years later, I would use the phrase "It's CHRISTMAS!" as a weapon against my younger sibling. If they were sleeping in, I'd go up to their ear and whisper "It's Christmas...", and they'd immediately wake up. One time, I got socked in the jaw, immediately ensuring that there would not be any more of the "It's Christmas" game.

Nowadays, we all sleep in. One Christmas, I slept all day, and got up just in time to see some relatives leaving. I came stumbling dozily into the lounge-room at around 5:30pm, and sat down on the carpet, my eyes wide like a fish and my mouth agape. Somebody took a photo, I was sitting in a weird position, and I had gone to sleep with my hair up, so it was now doing that weird 'palm-tree' thing it always does. Who's that weird lady? Oh. That's your Aunt Genevieve. Another year, I downed half a bottle of champagne, then disappeared. Hours later, I was found snoring loudly on my bed, which I had gone straight towards after feeling "a little woozy".

So how do I know it's Christmas? It's everywhere, that's how I know. Not in a "warms the cockles of your heart" kinda way, no. Here's how it goes for me. I am walking through a department store, and am suddenly confronted by CHRISTMAS, in all it's snowery glory. Snowerific. So where are they keeping the underwear section now? Near the electronics section. So now I can try and play the store XBox while trying to hang onto 3 pairs of bras and hangers at the same time. At this point I usually have some crazy idea about putting an XBox console in the changing room, which is immediately superseded by the intense concentration needed to readjust the bras from 'no shoulders', to 'I'm just skinny', so that I can try them on.

It's November. The world is commercially trying to brainwash me into getting 'Christmas fever'. I resist stubbornly. In my mind, it is not Christmas until midnight, December 1st. I have to put the tree up first. Then I can go crazy. Sort of like as if I was pricked by tinsel

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