I don’t know about anyone else, but after a while, it comes as something of a relief to get back to the normality of time out of the silly season. I enjoy the festive period as much as the next man but after a while, there’s only so much chocolate that you can eat for breakfast.
Wizzard proudly sang that they ‘Wish it could be Christmas every day’ and no doubt, on paper, almost all of us would love the idea of every day being Christmas day. The food, the gifts, the excitement, the fun. Bung everything together and you have a heady cocktail of the magic of Christmas.
Now as kids, the silly season was just the ultimate magic time. The twinkling lights and all the things listed above added together to create this explosion of wonder which so many of us would wish to last a lifetime but the reality is very different.
The day itself is magical because it only happens once a year. If it was the same every day, eventually even the most die hard fan would start to feel jaded. It’s the change that we love. The out of the ordinary which we don’t see all of the time makes it so prized.
I struggled out to work in the dark on Boxing day morning, cursing the horror that was normality, but the reality of the fact was that the cold splash of water which was going back to the usual world was what made the previous day mean as much as it did. It was so out of the ordinary.
So I welcome the return to work and the packing away of all of the decorations because it means that the journey towards the next one has well and truly begun and with that in mind, I’m going to get started on the next book.
Owen Elgie 