SOLD: Beautiful Happyzine

By Joyce Elwood-Smith

I love Christmas, it can mean many different things to different people.  To Christians it is a special time to celebrate the birth of Christ, to attend church and enjoy singing Christmas carols. Others will consider sentimental songs about snowmen and sleigh bells and coming home  for Christmas that play nonstop in malls and supermarkets while they shop in their jandals and shorts to be synonymous with Christmas.

For most people it is a time to be with families a precious time, when we cling to nostalgic traditions remembering our own childhood and the wonderment of it all. A time for telling stories in the candlelight under the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree, a time to enjoy Christmas cake, fruit mince pies and homemade short bread.

Here in New Zealand luscious fresh cherries, strawberries and raspberries are ready just in time to top our pavalovas and trifles. It is a time for cooking a special dinner, be it roast turkey and all the trimmings eaten at a beautifully laid dining table with gold candles, Christmas crackers and a vase of Christmas lilies or salads set out on a red and white tablecloth over a folding camp table, barbecued steak and sausages, kebabs or crayfish at the beach or by a quiet bush stream or lake.

When I was a child we always had roast leg of lamb, with brand new potatoes dug from our garden and baby peas podded that very morning on the back step fresher than any frozen pea advertisement could ever claim. Freshly made mint sauce and sweet little carrots also from the garden, only the kumara came from somewhere up north.

Many people from Christchurch will be having a very different Christmas this year, tree and decorations may be in storage, the home they have shared family Christmas’s for decades, gone. My own decorations are stowed safely away and it is strange not to fish them out and hang them on my tree which stands forlornly in the corner of the garage. But like other families we will regroup and celebrate the occasion in a familiar way, maybe the trifle cannot be served in Grandma’s crystal bowl and the set of sherry glasses is depleted but the most important thing is families as far as possible will be together.  People from the Nelson region will be battling with the aftermath of mudflows.

Christmas can be a time of financial stress, a time when relationships become strained. Joy to the world, peace and goodwill to all mankind flies out the window of consumerism, I know of families who buy their gifts in the Boxing Day sales, economically it makes sense.

Some will set aside an afternoon to make their own Christmas treats to give away.

Bake some gingerbread and cut it into stars. Fill a recycled takeaway container lined with red paper and an assortment of biscuits or homemade sweets. There are oodles of non- expensive ideas. Maybe a plant from the garden, a cutting that has struck, a seedling in a painted jam jar, a bouquet of herbs, a couple of nearly new magazines, there are endless ideas.

‘Want’ used as a verb is something we desire or crave, ‘want’ as a noun means need; for example families in Africa have very little and are in ‘want’ of fresh water and ways of supporting themselves.

If we ‘want’ we have the opportunity through organisations such as ‘World Vision’ or ‘Tear Fund’ to help relieve this ‘want’. Turning our ‘want’ around and addressing the ‘want’ of somebody less fortunate than our selves is sharing the spirit of Christmas. There may even be someone closer who just ‘wants’ a helping hand or a cheery word.

All I ‘want’ for Christmas is you to ‘want’ this too.

Happy Christmas!

Joyce Elwood-Smith

Tags: Christmas