Ho Ho Ho Its Magic

It's 4am, I'm hopelessy jet lagged yet am lying awake thinking of Magic so am giving up to sit at my laptop to write. I'll pay for this tomorrow you know!

My third child has given me grief about this trip to London at Christmas for months. He created every possible diversion – injury, illness, rugby commitments and finally resorting to the mother of all tantrums – anything to punish me for ruining his Christmas. So what was he seeing that I was ruining?

I was taking away HIS magic of Christmas.

For him, magic happens each year with the decoration of the house, putting up the tree, going shopping together on the first night of December to see the City Christmas lights, Christmas at the farm the Sunday BEFORE Christmas, Big family dinner on Xmas Eve (including my parents, brother and his family, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends) sing carols in five part harmony together, watch Muppets Xmas Carol together, opening one present before midnight, all four kids sleeping together in one room, plus partners and ex in laws, no one allowed upstairs until 7am then everyone together have to go to the tree, one person hands out the presents and then we all rip open the paper, play together, eat special breakfast together then have a snooze, then dress to go to the various relatives for the rest of the day. Then Boxing Day the tradition is the group movie outing before heading to the beach together until the New Year.

This is how my son experiences HIS magic of Christmas. Note that all activities are TOGETHER – this is important to HIM. Ex partners with whatever girlfriends form part of our inner circle are expected to participate in this annual ritual. No exceptions - Christmas is for family - in whatever form that may be.

When they were little, the Santa tradition was the main event. We would read “The Night Before Christmas” together after dinner, put out a pillow case just for Santa presents, search the sky to see if we could catch a glimpse of his sleigh, put out the bottle of Fourex beer, plates of Christmas cake (I had baked after soaking the fruit in rum and brandy for 4 months prior) plus a carrot for Rudolph, the children would go to bed around 10, we would clean up the dinner, wrap the presents and still be putting together the Santa presents under the tree and in the pillow cases way after midnight, they would get up around 5am with whoever was the baby that year and the day would begin with stories of spying Santa in the middle of the night sneaking into their rooms.

My youngest child clung onto that tradition for as long as possible and the other kids played along as none of them wanted to relinquish that magic. Each of them have taken turns gigging as Santa’s elf or Carolling during the day for quite a few years as well. Once the baby of the family turned ten, and everyone complained about gigging on Christmas Day, the festivities quickly morphed into this important ritual carefully crafted by my third child. The other kids go along with his traditions and willingly participate each year. However as the two eldest now own their own homes, their OWN version of the magic of Christmas is being developed - with the years and growth of each child's inner circle, the magic transforms its network coverage and appeal.

My parents were never really into creating magic for Christmas and this gave me the freedom from an early age to organise the Christmas decorations. Mum and Dad played Santa until we were about 10 but after that, the gifts were very basic with little ceremony. From an early age, Christmas Day was spent up at Hazel and Rons farm with our grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts. THAT was MY magic! Rotten mango fights up the tree with my cousins, my aunt serving a cold lunch featuring to my horror each year minted jellied peas, at night we ate cold leftovers but the plum pudding with 5 cents hidden inside dripping with my aunts lumpy custard was the drawing card. We all played under the mango trees, (adults and children alike) floated on old tractor tyre tubes in the dam, playing cricket and tag, card games with elderly relatives and touch you last whenever anyone went home. The tree was a real pine tree that always drooped in the summer heat by the end of the day. Decorations were paper machier and pine cones, cuddlepie seed pods and gum leaves. From the age of ten I began to sing in the choir and play organ in the church and so Christmas Eve included midnight mass and carolling.

My parents didn’t create OUR family Christmas ritual so when I began my own family and was still pretty much a kid myself, I was busting with excitement to create my OWN magic.

As my daughter and I celebrate Capricorn birthdays just after New Year, those two weeks have been crammed with parties, events, gigs and extreme event management seemingly non stop for the past twenty years. However, through the years, Christmas became quite hard work. December became a frenzy of Planning, the Art of Decoration, Projects, Shopping, Cooking, Cleaning and Traditional Maintenance. We were always adding to our MAGIC repertoire. There were the Sweet Boxes, Profile Charts, the Magic Parcels, The Xmas Slideshows, Photo Competition, Costume Parties, Xmas Cookbook, the 12 days of Gifts BEFORE Christmas and the annual Christmas books. Our Christmas projects were out of control and I was beginning to start the NEXT Christmas planning from Boxing Day.

A few years ago, I began to feel resentment at creating this magic alone. I wanted to see it, experience it, create it however more than anything I wanted to share it. Like my son, the word TOGETHER became important to me. My original intention was to create magic for my children to enjoy. This expanded out into my inner circle of family and then my circle of friends and would regularly host 50 guests at each event. The washing up and cleaning for weeks after December 24 would take it toll leading to exhaustion for New Year. 2006 saw me in hospital for Christmas Eve hence 2007 found us in London without half of my inner circle contemplating the MAGIC of Christmas from another perspective millions of miles away from home. (and at 4am on a dark cold winters morning)

We arrived in London late on Christmas Eve and the boys were greatly disappointed. The fantasy the boys had was that there would be incredible coloured lights and decorations on every street corner, roving Christmas Carollers, snow and the smells of traditional Christmas fare - like in all the movies they have watched for years. Instead, as we roved the streets at 7am they found no sunshine, no heat, little colour other than grey, streets were deserted - the only smells were 24 hour corner stores selling day old pappadams.

They expected the MAGIC to be created by something or someone else.

I spoke to the eldest two children back in Australia and they too had a different Xmas featuring curry, midnight whipper snippering and general silliness. They created their OWN magic with whatever was around them and even though they missed us, Christmas for them was still magical and fun.

So when my uncle finally arrived mid Christmas morning, with Christmas cake and muffins that he baked himself - a little bit of Christmas began to filter into the boys gloom. My uncle took us out to lunch at Thistle Marble Arch where we sat with hundreds of people who didn't necessarily have a family Christmas to go to. Together we ate traditional roast lunch and drank copious amounts of wine while wearing silly hats, playing balloon battles with the other tables surrounding us and creating our own magic with whoever was around us at that moment.

Exhausted with jet lag and filled to the brim with London Christmas pudding, the boys finally agreed that Christmas in London was indeed special and magical.

Isn't magic, after all, simply making the best of what you’ve got without expectation or judgement, going with the flow and appreciating the moment - just as it is?

Imagine if we could start to do this EVERY year without necessarily the tree, decorations, the gifts, the dinners and the ancient rituals. Imagine what magic we could create out of the moment as it gently lands on us on Christmas day.