As he week draws to a close I returned home with a sense of dread, true to my fears I found Mandi sorting through the Christmas decorations for the weekend. Christmas decorations is something I excel at, to the point that I once contemplated starting a business going to houses to decorate for a fee, however this year I felt no excitement whatsoever and offered no help at all. Mandi put a few things up this evening so I kept out of the way and skulked upstairs in the office and sorted out some music for the podcast. I have started to have a trickle of Christmas songs coming in now, so I listened to them to counter the Michael Buble noises coming from downstairs.

Neither of us have any particular plan for tomorrow so I will probably spend the day in my office working and avoiding the activity downstairs while Mandi decks the halls. I dragged out the box of Christmas DVDs to keep downstairs and had a look through them as I’m sure I will want to watch them at some point. I do like Christmas films but I wonder if I’ll watch them with the same enthusiasm as I would have once done. I’ll probably record the podcast during the afternoon and catch up with some writing I have to do for a project taking place in January.

We are buying each other presents and hosting Christmas dinner at our house, and I will of course play along rather than complaining about everything. Last year I pondered the ideaof avoiding Christmas for one year and celebrating it every two years instead, but Mandi won’t have it despite the fact that I have mentioned it every time the festive season has come up in conversation. My fantasy would be to totally ignore the fact that it is Christmas just once, or spend it in a hot country.

I used to love decorating day and a part of me wishes I could get that enthusiasm back. We decorated the living room, dining room, our bedroom, Emily’s bedroom, the kitchen and the hallways and the whole house looked like a festive explosion. It used to annoy me when I saw houses that only had a tree up and no other decorations because these people just weren’t trying. Now I can honestly say that if I was on my own (or had my way) then I wouldn’t do so much as blow up a single balloon. The magical wonder of Christmas has been erased from my brain as if someone has performed some kind of operation like the one in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind so that now I just don’t give a shit about Christmas.

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