All I want..

This Christmas, more than ever before, I have but one request and it is a simple one - for, you see dear Santa, all I really want this Christmas is Christmas!

I want to relive, if just for one last time, the joyful anguish of going to bed on Christmas Eve and tormenting myself on my behaviour that year and what sort of gift I could expect accordingly; waking up in the wee hours of the morning and tip-toeing downstairs, in breach of all parental admonitions, to see if there were any new parcels under what at the time seemed like a giant Christmas tree; the exhilaration that Santa's delivery would bring about, by itself seemingly validating the behaviour during an entire year which to a child's mind feels more like two or three.

I miss the anticipation with which we would greet the last day of school before the two week Christmas break. Little did we know then that what we were leaving behind were some of the jolliest years of our lives.

Year after year we would harbour the deluded hope that it would snow for Christmas, completely dismissing the meteorological improbability of such an event. We would look in awe at the snow on our TV screens and it seemed all so magical. Later in life we would leave our shores and discover that the magic soon gives way to sheer inconvenience and physical discomfort. But none of this mattered at the time of course.

Then there was the annual ritual of scouring the stationery shops in search of a joint Christmas and Birthday card for Nanna - possibly the only person who gave out gifts on her birthday instead of receiving them! And no Christmas was complete without Nanna's canneloni and her lasagne and her predictable apologies for their not being sufficiently salted when they always tasted yummy. It was also one of the few days when our uncle would not be at work and he would actually manage to stay up for a whole meal. Oh how badly we miss them both!

Tonight as I lay in bed I only ask you for a fleeting reminder of how it felt when Christmas was really Christmas and this child was really a child; a snapshot of this holiday as seen through the eyes of innocence itself.