Here comes the silly season!
Nature’s Christmas decoration: the flowering of the waratahs signals the oncoming festive season. 2021, Pentax MX.
Christmas can mean so many different things to people. To children, it’s the time of treats and sweets, for grown ups it can be anything from the loneliest time of year to the loveliest time of year. Christmas can translate to love or it can translate to consumerism; it depends on the perspective lens we wear.
There is a strangely powerful anticipation in the lead up to Christmas, which begins in earnest when we enter the final month of the year. The Christmas decorations go up at home and around town and in the shops. The gift hoarding begins. Chocolate santas wrapped in aluminium foil line the supermarket shelves, fruit mince pies appear at the bakers, and every bloody retail assistant starts wearing red hats with white pom poms on the end. The Christmas carols start playing, and don’t stop playing, songs depicting little baby Jesus and his nativity scene.
If I was an alien observing humanity from space I would think there is something very strange going on indeed!
I’m not sure why it is that people go a bit bonkers in the lead up to Christmas. I have worked in retail for ten years, and there is a strange process that occurs the closer we get to the holidays. It’s as if everyone realises simultaneously on the 1st of December that there is only one month left of the year and that it’s time to pack in all the things we intended to do from the very start of the year but never quite got around to doing. Plus there is an imminent work deadline, plus the kids are home from school, plus we need to think of a gift to buy for our least favourite work colleague, and dear lord we haven’t ordered the turkey from the butcher, and what on earth will grandma think if we break tradition this year…
Stop. Right there. Take a breath. It will be okay. You don’t have to shop till you drop. You don’t even have to shop. If you wish to let someone know that you love them, there are more ways to do that then buying an expensive gift that you can’t really afford. Instead of running around like headless chooks, how about we all calmed the hell down and lowered our expectations of ourselves and simply made sure we are present and attentive to the people we care about?
I would like to conclude on a sobering note.
I heard that Lifeline gets the most phone calls around Christmas time. Not everyone has a family to turn to, come this time of year. So if you feel overwhelmed at all your social obligations, and feel annoyed that during the Christmas lunch you might be seated next to your least favourite auntie who tends to smell too strongly of lavender, perhaps think for a moment of the people who won’t be having a Christmas lunch at all. People who live alone. People who have no one to call on. People on the streets, people who have been outcast by our culture, people who for one reason or another have been forsaken. For some people, Christmas is a really difficult time of year.
PS: Thank you to every one of you who read my posts or enjoy viewing my pictures. You inspire me each week to come up with new content, to go out and take photos, and makes me feel like perhaps all of this pointless writing and photography really is worthwhile.
May this festive season bring you all love, joy and kindness and a chance to reconnect not just with your friends and family, but a chance to reconnect with our collective home, planet Earth.
Much Love,
-A.S. 18/12/2021