"Well I wish it could be xmas everyday" - Wizzard Dec 1973
It seems a little bit to me that for many of us (at least those of us who can write a blog on a electronic device or receive it) this is actually the case, especially if you compare things to standards of living, general wealth and health to 1973 when the song was released and I was not yet 1.
Many people that I see choose to forget get this fact, or so it seems, as they continue to clamber higher and higher up the affluenza ladder. Never managing to reach the magic and peace of enough and instead chasing round and round never ending corners looking for a bigger and better thing and all the time not realising that they are the architects of their own developing disenchantment.
Strong stuff on xmas eve from the "it's alright for him" Guy who is not going back to work until February. I am sure we would all be so righteous if we could do what he is doing.
The fact is I think many of us can.
We can choose to buy things we don't really need both for ourselves and worse for our kids, showing each other that, although we don't really like the amount of fake plastic trees we have, society dictates and we must continue collecting.
Or, or what??
Or don't.
Teach our kids that xmas is about celebrating the birth of a holy child if you choose but for the rest of us is it a "plastic fantastic fest"?
I don't think so. I love the culture of xmas, I was an alter boy for gods sake, I love the songs and the lights and the happiness.
I don't love the excess any more and more about that on Boxing Day, tune out now for the faint hearted.
I want my kids to see xmas as a time for us to shut down from the madness and come together. To celebrate how fu€£&%g lucky we are and maybe even bring a little of joy to someone else.
I don't hate Christmas, I love it. It could be like this all the time, people smiling and saying hello to strangers.
Helping others and having fun.
We just have to choose that approach and maybe save a little of the spending and consuming from this week to distribute around the rest of the year.
Imagine that, imagine you said to the kids "we are having a bit less this xmas but instead in January we are all doing this (insert cool thing to do together).
With all this ranting in mind I give you a xmas gift for me and my 9 year old son Callum.
He came up to me the other day (I was off work and had time) and asked me if I had seen the poem he wrote at school.
He got 5 golden points for it (that is loads).
It here, below, it speaks for itself.
A couple of notes though.
If I had been working or buzzing with work I would have missed this and so would you.
9 year olds, musicians and movies have been telling us this message for ever.
Honestly, I wish you, yes you reading this, the best, most peaceful and wonderful xmas ever ever ever.
Mostly I wish you and the people you care about happiness.
From us:
Go and open the door
Go and open the door
Maybe outside there's
Glistening starts in the midnight air or
the moon being a disco ball or
A deserted city.
Go and open the door
Maybe you'll see a
friend smiling gently or
glass in glass.
Go and open the door
at least
you'll see something
(Callum Campbell 9 yrs old)
*its good isn't it - wish I had written it.