Christmas 2012….

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…was perfect.


It was cinnamon sweet, warm and toasty, bursting with freshly grated nutmeg…and sprinkled in teeny tiny candy canes.  Every smell, taste, touch, sight or sound said, “MERRY CHRISTMAS!” in large, bold (red) letters.  There was no mistaking the season in the Jones household; Baby Dragon’s introduction to “festive” could only have been made more complete had there been real-life carolers sat on our sofa eating richly fruited mince pies and sipping Earl Grey from the Christmas china that we don’t have.

On the Night Before Christmas (Which somehow always reminds me of Officer Training in NBC warfare, and given the amount of preparation required is a pretty good analogy, I like to think) the tree was bursting with colour (although the baubles did seem to be making a mad dash for the top of the tree, out of the eager and grasping reach of Baby Dragon), there were Mickey Mouse and “Baby’s 1st” stockings, matching candy monster pyjamas, a new Blu-Ray (Ice Age 4) and fancy popcorn that we had to heat on the cooker. 

The reindeer food had been prepared the day before, and sprinkled in readiness for the prancing and pawing that was destined to take place, the elves had been up to holiday mischief and Jensen had placed the signpost outside for Father Christmas, complete with silver Magic Key as we have no chimney…a subject that was up for continued, in-depth discussion most of the days of December. 

 

On Christmas morning, there were personalised sacks of gifts with big red ribbons sent from the jolly man himself… 

   
…tangerines (the “smell of Christmas” according to Jensen and Dadda and thanks to a new book)
and Lindt chocolates in our stockings… 
 

Even though this was our 3rd Christmas as parents, this was the first
year that Jensen really understood what was going on, and why he had
gifts ~ and because of this, we received gifts too.  Huge ones.  Heart hugging ones.  They weren’t wrapped in glittery paper, or proffered in expensive jewelers boxes, but they made my stomach squirm in the same butterfly-fueled anticipation I had as a child.  The magic of Christmas morning came alive again in my heart after so many long years of its dormancy.  It turns out that truly loving someone more than you love yourself takes away material desires, presses the reset button on the magic and dusts off the welcome mat to Father Christmas.   

 

It will sound so cliched, but it was truly everything I hoped it would be and so much more.  My beautiful (germ free) boys, their contagious giggles of happiness and the infectious excitement of Father Christmas’ impending visit (the days of which were counted down meticulously on our five chocolate advent calendars) transformed our dreary and overly wet month of December into a magical, joyous time filled with chocolate-covered memories, now buried deep within my heart to be replayed over and over in my mind like a secret cinema….and about to be splashed onto the pages of this blog.