It’s almost Christmas time (now I’m compelled to sing Mistletoe & Wine by Cliff Richards and am marveling at the voices in my head that have an uncanny ability to speak up at the most inappropriate times) and the holiday season is usually filled with good cheer unless you’re Scrooge or a descendant of his. Also Grinch. That’s another guy who didn’t do well with the Christmas season either, did he?

Our shopping malls declared the arrival of this season sometime last month with vengeance. I was just minding my own business, doing that daily bread and milk round when I suddenly realized that the mall I was in looked dressed for an Indian wedding.  I looked up and saw that Christmas decorations and trees had been put up overnight and as of that moment on a secret signal had gone to my wallet to shell out any money in it and buy things and not allow me to be stingy either.

I fret when December comes around. All of a sudden there are delicious looking cakes that get displayed at bakeries, mince pies urge you to take just one bite, chocolate aisles at the supermarket are laden with Christmas themed confectionary and suddenly, the 397 grammes of weight I might have lost over the past eleven months since the New Year Resolutions, comes back in multiples.

Maybe it’s a good thing nobody loves me enough to send those delectable gift hampers my way that I see, sometimes enviously, being delivered to the bosses at work. From fine wines to delectable treats and a lot of other yummy things, these baskets make me yearn for one, just so I can take pictures and put them on Facebook and make a big deal of trying not to make a big deal of it. Just like many others I know, actually!

My kids HATE mince pies and I simply love them and every year I buy loads from the bakery just to ‘see if they like them this year’ but who am I kidding? I will be devastated if they ever decide they do like the mince pies because that will mean I will have to give them all to them and not pretend that I hate them too but because I’m Martyr Mummy I have to have them and not waste them. I run in vicious circles I create for myself.

Sometimes if I’ve been nice over the year, some people also tend to invite me to their parties. Just a couple of weeks back I was ranting right here that not many people like to invite single women to their parties because they feel awkward. Anyway, I do have  a few friends who don’t ‘mind’ me hanging out with them and again it’s food and drink galore. Most people are on leave from work so the tendency to over-indulge and party until late is high. Because the radio doesn’t go off over the festive season and I still need to gather money for my kids school fees, I tend to leave early to be at work the next day. It can get tiring but it’s so much fun.

Just before New Year’s Eve I will indulge in that useless exercise of jotting down some resolutions for the new year and because the weighing scale starts begging for mercy around the end of December I feel compelled to add weight loss and exercise to my resolutions.

That’s another story for another day.  I have a sudden hankering to have a mince pie with a mug of Earl Grey tea before ‘they go off’. One can’t take chances, can one?