Tommy Collison

For all my talk of ‘need to be doing things all the time’, I somehow find time to procrastinate buying Christmas presents later and later each year.

Maybe it’s because I don’t like them. Not the actual presents, just the buying. I’m not one of those insufferable cynics who goes around posting leaflets with ‘happy commercialized Jesus day!’ in big writing – quite the opposite: I love Christmas. I’m just not a fan of having to buy stuff, because you risk putting people in the wrong box with what you buy, and nothing ticks people off more than being pigeon-holed in the wrong fashion.

Like many things, Christmas was a whole lot simpler when I was younger. You made sure you were in bed on time and when you got up there were presents. Being 5 rocked. I also distinctly remember not being one of those children who stayed awake in bed all night or worse, kept a silent vigil at the top of the stairs.

I totally had aspirations to be the former – but the events always happened in the same sequence: I hop into bed, and go ‘ooh, I should stay up to see if I can just hear h- ZZZZzzzzzzz’, and the next thing I knew, it was morning.

I never crept downstairs to catch a sight of the man in red purely because (I like to think) I was a logical boy at 6 or 7 years old – I went to bed, he came in and left gifts – it made good business sense and I wasn’t going to question that.

Nah, Santa wasn’t the one you had to look out for on December 24th; it was Mom. If this was Harry Potter, it’d be She Whose Curfew Must Be Obeyed. Dire retribution would follow for those who got up before 7am. Many a Christmas mornings would sometimes find me at 6am counting down the 3,600 seconds until I could get up.

Nowadays, the boot’s on the other food when it comes to Christmas. Not being a kid any more, I’m expected to give gifts as well as receive them. I like to think of it as another business proposition. Indeed Friday night found me working on a certain someone’s Christmas present, and as I was doing it the thought struck me that this could very well be how it is in 20 year’s time, when my kids are gone to bed and I’m silently working away in the kitchen alone desperately trying to get everything fixed in time.

Where do the goddamned batteries go?!

is a phrase I’m sure many nocturnal gift-givers such as myself can relate to.