You get to spend time with the family and have awesome meals that fill you up to the brink, for a few days.
I also stuff my face with trifle a tad too much.
Plus, you get cool free stuff.
This is usually referred to as presents or gift-giving, where normal people patiently tear the wrapping off, carefully removing the tape.
But that’s not me.
No, I rip it apart into thousands of colourful, airborne pieces of paper and then some.
I wouldn’t bother with gently shaking it to hear what is inside or taking three guesses on what it may or may not be.
I want to see, and I want to see it now.
It’s not greediness or anything in that category, but curiosity, excitement and have-to-know-now – a disastrous combination and tends to get the better of me in situations such as Christmas gift-unwrapping.
So being in my own place for the first time and the first Christmas, I needed to get a new tree.
Which was probably the most exciting day I’ve had in a while, ’cause I now get to have my very own tree, thousands of blinking lights and all.
Went to the shop and took my sweet time on deciding which tree I want, much to the annoyance of some people.
Obviously I wanted the huge, fluffy tree with twinkling lights already on it, but unfortunately the budget did not make way for a R2 000 Christmas tree.
I then unselfishly chose second best and took (compared to the big one) an almost naked tree.
It was agreed beforehand that we wouldn’t buy the decorations along with the tree because we needed to ‘budget’.
I truly detest that word.
But when we finally loaded the tree in the trolley, my head just magically turned to the decorations’ aisle and my feet were forced to move in that direction.
Honestly, I don’t know how that happened. Definitely wasn’t my fault.
My head said move and my feet obeyed.
I was absolutely helpless in that situation, nothing I could do.
About an hour-and-a-half later we walked out of the shop, loaded with a tree and decorations that just happened to fall into the trolley.
Also have no idea how that happened, but they wanted to be there because if they were put back on the shelf by a certain ‘mood-killer’ and ‘budget man’, they magically ended up in the trolley again.
So I took them home out of the goodness of my heart.
We got home and I immediately started unpacking and setting up the tree, smiling like an idiot all the way through.
When the star was on and the twinkling lights flashed, I hopped up and down while clapping my hands.
Feeling like an absolute kid again.
