T'is is the first year that Santa doesn't take the credit.
T'is the first season the fat man in the red suit doesn't get ALL the credit, ill deserved at that.
I'm not a grinch by any stretch of the imagination. I have gnawed through carrots in reindeer fashion. Emptied half a can of beer and left white whiskers on the top of the beer can (sorry Keith). I have scooped up reindeer poo which has rolled off the roof. I had trotted soot through the carpet even though the flat we were living in at the time had no chimney.
That was the easy stuff.
Labouring under the goal post which was fetched and carried from K-mart doing significant damage to my car when I'd somehow managed to get its box into the car. Then I wrestled with it again to get it out. Tackling it, when I got my breath back, to wrap it in Christmas cheer. It was as if it had been parcelled by little elves (did I say malignant in their invisibility) and rolled off the sleigh, like snow off a reindeer's nose.
Flipping big nose is all I can say.
I've had to conquer the conversations which go like this...
'But it doesn't matter how much it costs in the shops...'
Think I know where this is going... and it's not close to salvaging the budget.
'because Santa's elves make them in Santa's little igloo workshop.' Jingle... jingle...
'But Santa's elves aren't quite up to speed on the latest PS3 or whatever... they're elves... they make wooden dolphins and rocking horses.'
An eyebrow is raised, eyes are rolled and the nose is tapped.
This year, and it is the first, I can go to sleep and not worry about remembering if I tooth-marked the carrot and worried the beer. I can tuck presents under the tree without having the worry that I might be caught out like the unfortunate tooth fairy was a few teeth ago - his eyes aghast that Ben at school had been right but then noting pragmatically 'I was worried that you were Ben's mum'. Ben's mum must have been as elephant-like as me.
But then again, I'm going to miss the tubby Christmas phantom. I'll miss majiking him up and over as he sped through the skies on a clear Christmas night. I'm going to miss him squelching uncomfortably down warm chimneys or tucking into his mince pies.
I'm going to miss that little bit of make-believe magic we tousled and fooled with each year as the reindeer were harnessed. Might even miss the nobbly earnest elves, can they help the challenge of the vertical with no real drop?
I'm already missing those little embers of childhood and lost magic.
But my boys are tucked up in warm beds, dreaming boy dreams with full tummies. I suspect many children have had their childhood robbed a long time before the fat man in the red suit did a disappearing act in our household.
Must be Christmas.
Merry Christmas one and all. And, I suppose, a little bit of credit to the red hatted one.
