Getting in the spirit of things...

I've struggled a little (but not as much as last year) to get into the Christmas spirit while "upside down". Instead of dark nights, woolly hats, the possibility of snow and twinkly lights to herald the Christmas season, down here it is strawberry picking, blossoming pohutukawa, end of year school exams and the approach of the longest day that indicate to those in the know that Christmas is just around the corner.
I've been waiting and waiting for the pohutukawa ever since last May when we moved to this house on a pohutukawa lined street. Sadly it is a bad year for them this year (having been the best year in a long, long time last year) and only one on the street is showing any signs of blossom. I had trained myself that pohutukawas meant Christmas. They have let me down.
We are not helped, of course, by the super early posting thing. It cost well close to $200 to send all our parcels and cards this year despite getting in before the "economy" deadline. Had we left it until a little closer to Christmas so that we were more "in the mood", I dread to think what that cost would have been.
It is hard to trigger that Christmas feeling, excitement (materialistic, spiritual or emotional), because we don't have any of the usual clues.
And so I have spent this afternoon wrapping up the few small presents I got for Husbink and baking for the church community Christmas lunch (apparently over 200 people from the community who would not have anyone else to spend Christmas with are going this year, awesome!), with a sound track of my two Christmas CDs - Songs of Praise carols and, umm, I don't remember the name of the other one but something like The Best Christmas Album in the World Ever Part 27...
I'm not sure I'm any more in the mood as would be normal back home but I'm certainly a little more giddy. And mainly it is down to one song. Ahem. Possibly one of the cheesiest songs in existance but with that manages to marry together the different strands of Christmas excitement. The cheesy, twinkly-lighted, shopping, shopping, shopping excitement. The emotional, family aspect (at least in part cos my mum and gran both like it too). The spiritual part as, of modern Christmas songs (i.e. not including carols), it has to have some of the words that best reflect Christianity, and how it now squeezes into an increasingly secular celebration of one of its most important events. Yes, that would be Saviour's Day by Cliff Richard. The only song in my Christmas collection that made me dance round the living room and kitchen while baking my ginger & almond biscotti (an experiment - need work, too sweet...). Having said that, The Spinners version of The Twelve Days of Christmas has just come on...if anything can make me giggle and fall into childhood reminiscence, it is The Spinners. Oh, and maybe Flanders & Swan but that isn't relevant to this now is it?