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| # 55 Santa’s not so little helpers |
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I love Christmas; it’s my favourite time of year. Yeah I know, I can hear a lot of you say that it’s a pain because the lead up to it can be pretty stressful. The silly season, when there’s heaps to do and everyone wants your time. Endless invites to end of year parties and the mad rush to spend like crazy in the final week before the twenty-fifth.
If you’re in business it could mean that you’re virtually closed down for a month and all the staff want their holiday pay, so cash flow is tight.
If you are a Christian then this is one of the special religious times of the year, but if you have another faith then you may be wondering what all the fuss is about.
For me Christmas is all about the kids and fun and laughter, my immediate family while no longer children, all have razor sharp wits and an excellent sense of timing. So when we come together to celebrate Christmas, the house is always full of laughter and it truly is a magical time.
Sadly all of our Grandchildren live on the other side of the planet now and there is a major hole in my soul, we try hard to go there to be with them, but that means we have to leave the rest of the family behind.
Christmas has some wonderful memories for me; one year I remember, years ago when the kids were little my lovely wife and I would wait up to all was quiet on Christmas Eve to wrap the pressies and then sneak into the kid’s bedroom to play Santa. We would leave the pillowcases of gifts on the end of the beds and sneak off to our own bed for a few hours of much deserved sleep, before they eventually woke up and squealed with delight as they ripped the wrapping off the toys that we had spent so long preparing and then spend the next hour or two sitting on our bed showing us what Santa had left them.
Well this particular year, as we crept into the girl’s room when everything in the house was very quiet, you guessed it, I knocked over a huge pile of books my youngest daughter had beside her bed, the loudest noise you ever heard at that time of the night, while doing that particular job. We froze instantly as she sat bolt upright in her bed, we then dived under a bed each so that the girls would not discover us and spent the next twenty minutes lying in the dust and other unimaginable foreign objects that only little girls can keep under their beds, while they settled down again.
I couldn’t see her in the dark but I know my lovely wife was giving me the dreaded evil eye, but I was just trying to stop myself from peeing my pants and laughing out loud. I got fired from the role of Santa after that, I still wonder why, I thought it was a hell of a joke.
We developed another little tradition after that, one of the kids decorated an old baseball cap with Christmas decorations and streamers and such. Each year we would pick someone to wear the hat and then they get to hand out the pressies from under the tree.
Sounds simple and straightforward doesn’t it, …….wrong.
Nobody took into consideration the power the hat would take on over time, now it’s known as “The Hat” and everyone can remember who wore it last year and how long it’s been since they wore it last. You see the wearer of “The Hat” has complete power over the speed and regularity of pressie distribution and as we all know, ultimate power corrupts ultimately.
Even the kids new husbands and wives have had the honour of wearing “The Hat” as they have been welcomed into the family. But it only takes one minute under that old baseball cap to be totally under the spell of its power. Cynical sceptics become power-crazed megalomaniacs in seconds. We do try and warn them, but they just don’t believe us till they put it on.
For me Christmas day is one of the funniest and happiest days of the year with our home full of laughter and merriment.
However you celebrate this special day I really do hope you all have a merry Christmas and very happy new year.
But then, that is “Just an old Truckers point of view”
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