How the Grench Stole Christmas: A Modern Retelling of an Old Classic

I've Been to the Year 2000

Tonight, as the clock struck midnight, I was watching a movie. In this movie, young Mark Ruffalo returns to his home town to borrow money from Laura Linney, hang out with his nephew, and generally just f*ck sh*t up. Now, anyone who has seen Mark Ruffalo's Instagram lately knows that he is looking pretty old. So I came to wonder, how is it that he looks so young in this movie; it was only made in 2000 after all.

But then I realised. 2000 was 16 years ago.

16 years ago. That's almost my entire life (kind of).

16 years ago I was 7 years old, the London Eye opened, and the PlayStation 2 was released for sale in Japan. 16 years ago Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was published and Tiger Woods became the youngest golfer to win a Grand Slam. 

It was a different world.

Someone told me ages ago, that the reason the years go by faster as we get older, is because each year is a smaller fraction of the life you've already lived. I can't imagine what it must be like to be 80; the years must pass by like seconds. 

I don't remember much about being 7. But I do think the years passed more slowly back then. Probably because I had no concept of time and nothing much changes from year to year when your schoolwork is colouring and learning to tell the time. I do remember this weird play I was in called Millennium Bugs though. 

I remember feeling so old when I was a child, thinking that I'd already squandered away my youth. But really I squandered away my youth thinking that I squandered away my youth. I'm squandering away my youth right now eating nectarines in my underwear at 3am looking at pictures of Marty McFly on Google Images. There is a lesson to be learned here, probably. 

I feel like when I'm 100 years old, and on my deathbed with only moments of life left, I will think back to all those little moments in my life; moments when I was bored, or miserable, or wasting time doing absolutely nothing of value - and be filled with regret at the fact that I spent them bored, or unhappy, or wasted them away. I will regret thinking that I was old when I was young. I will regret thinking that my life was hard when it was easy. I will regret that I wished moments of my life away when I'm old and want nothing more than the wasted time back. 

I'm just so afraid of one day looking into the mirror and seeing an old face staring back at me, and wondering how this old guy got into my house, and which retirement village he escaped from, and having to call the cops. 

You either die young or you grow old. It's a tragedy. Mark Ruffalo. Julie Andrews. Me. All subject to the mercilessness of time. I wish I could go back to when I was 7. One day I'll probably wish I could go back to right now, and stop writing this blog and do something more important like save the whales or adopt an orphan. Or maybe I'll just hope that when I'm 100 I have Dementia so that I don't have to remember this abject, wasted life.

Everybody Hates Vegans

Apart from the stingray that killed Steve Irwin, animals are pretty much innocent.

Let's look at the facts; animals didn't murder JonBenét Ramsey, or David Bain's entire family. They didn't cause 9/11, or vote in John Key. What have animals ever done to you? (I know some people have been, like, bitten on the face by a dog or kicked by a horse, but bear with me while we look at the bigger picture).

Act II:

The Rain Forest. Planet eaRTH. Mother N A T U R E.

What do these things have in common?
The consumption of animal products of any kind is ultimately leading to their total destruction.

I've watched about an hour of Cowspiracy so am obviously an expert. And what did Cowspiracy show me (other than a guy who, with no apparent job other than looking at the Greenpeace website and secretly filming people, somehow affords a really nice house)?

• Raising livestock produces more greenhouses gases than the emissions of the entire transportation sector
• Agriculture (such as cattle grazing and the production of food crops) is the leading cause of deforestation - an acre of rain forest is cleared every second!
• Raising animals for food is responsible for 30% of global water consumption, occupies 45% of the earth's land, and is the leading cause of; environment degradation, resource consumption, habitat destruction, ocean dead-zones, and species extinction

Don't get me wrong. I have done no additional research, nor have I considered anyone else's opinion other than Cowspiracy guy's. But when I learned these things I was pretty saddened. But what made me most saddened was the fact that I, along with many other people, were supporting the agricultural industry by consuming animals products and thereby creating the need for these things to keep happening. 

The true heroes? Vegans.

Vegans are literally the unsung superheroes of the present day (and I can say this because I'm not a vegan).

Yet people mock vegans relentlessly.

But why?

WHY??

They are trying to SAVE US.

Making fun of someone for being vegan is like making fun of someone for cleaning up oil spills on beaches or nursing sick old people back to health.

While the rest of the population is taking a literal axe to planet earth's literal back, vegans are tending to the wounds. But there are too many axes and not enough vegans.

And check out this comprehensive list of things we wouldn't have if it weren't for planet earth:

• An inhabitable place to live
• Existence of any kind
• Julie Andrews

If the entire human population were vegan, there would be no more global warming, and the planet would last 1,000,000,000 light years longer, we would live forever, and all the bees would come back. I'm pretty sure I heard a scientist say that, no need to fact check.

The point of my writing this is not to convince everyone to become vegan (I have no where near enough faith in humanity for that - humans are b*tches), but to remind everyone that while you are enjoying your salami and your yoghurt, vegans are doing something to try to slow the world's eventual demise - maybe just long enough for another Adele album. 

Bad Friday: The True Meaning of Easter

Do you have a moment to talk about JESUS ?

Everyone's heard of Easter. Everyone's heard of bunnies. But how many people have actually heard of tHE BIBLE???? 

Studies show that only 100% of the people surveyed had ever even heard of Christianity. So, for all of you ignoramuses out there, here is an excerpt from the holy book itself, to give you a little crash course in the origins of Easter.

__________

Ages ago, like 40 years ago, there was a guy called Jesus. Instead of getting a job like a normal 33 year old, Jesus spent most of his time spitting in the eyes of blind people and hanging out with his 12 friends. That's why Jesus had to live at home with his mum, Mary, and his dad, Morgan Freeman. 

Jesus hated fig trees so much. And his best friend was Judas Iscariot. They would do everything together; praying at the temple, washing the feet of prostitutes, and some freaky cult sh*t like drinking each other's blood. 

But one day their friendship took a rocky turn when Jesus tried to steal Judas' girlfriend, Mary Mandarin. Judas was so mad!!! He had Jesus crucified so that he would never do it again. 

Jesus was on the cross for 40 days and 40 nights. Then he was buried in a cave. Everyone thought Jesus was dead, but he was faking it!!!!!!!! !!!!! He was alive!!!!!! He came out of his cave after 3 days and went to find Mary Mandarin to profess his undying love. 

But when he saw Judas and Mary Mandarin together, and how happy they were, he knew that he could never be with her. And he died for real this time - of a broken heart. 

The End

___________

But so many people seem to forget this. In their minds, Good Friday and Easter Sunday are not the days that Jesus fake died and real died, respectively, but instead a day of eating chocolate and spending time with their loved ones.

IMHO it's pretty f*cked up that Jesus lovers worldwide celebrate his heartbreak and subsequent death by doing the very thing Jesus was never able to do; eat chocolate eggs. 

And I don't wanna get into Christmas but usually on someone's birthday THEY are the one who gets presents????? Not literally everyone else. 

If Jesus were alive today, I'm pretty sure he would be livid at the state of modern society. On top of which, when was the last time anyone actually gathered together to pray for and remember Jesus? 

I'm no expert. I only know everything about The Bible. And I know Jesus would not be cool with the fact that his birth and death now mark the dates for some of the biggest consumerist holidays.  

Jesus was cremated when he died, and the place his ashes were scattered is now the site of Disneyland Paris.

How to Disappear off the Face of the Earth and Why You Should Try it This Season

Everyone loves a good mystery. That's why Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed grossed $400 in the Box Office. But although we see mystery portrayed in film time and time again, when was the last time you actually encountered a mystery in real life?

To properly construe my point, I have designed a short quiz to determine how much mystery is currently in your life.

Have you, or has anyone you know, ever:

a) been selected to track down an escaped mental patient, only to find that the missing patient was yourself? 

b) spent years battling amnesia and trying to track down the man who killed your wife with insulin, only to find that that man was yourself?

c) gone on a quest to find Mary Magdalene's tomb and discovered that it's under that triangle thing outside the Louvre, and that Mary Magdalene was yourself?

d) had anything remotely similar to the plot of Gone Girl happen to you?

If you answered 'no' to any of the above questions, then it sounds like it is a good time to enigma-up your life. There's no better time to start than right now immediately!!

Why Scooby and Velma never got together is the greatest mystery of all

The reason there are so many movies about mysteries, is that we, as an internation, have forgotten what it is to encounter a mystery for reals. And no wonder. We live in a world where it is near-impossible to be MIA, or AWOL, or DDR. We're all on the grid, like a giant game of Battleships. 

Thanks to Edward Norton leaking the contents of Obama's diary back in 2013, we know that we are being watched 24/7 by the NHS. Our every move is constantly monitored; when we are sleeping, or hanging out with our friends, even while using the internet to search for child porn.

To make matters worse, everyone uses social media these days, even (unfortunately) old people. Social media is just another means for 'Big Brother' to infiltrate our lives. Once you put something on the internet it's there forever, like herpes.  

Between us putting the information out there, and the government right clicking, and saving it to desktop, privacy is a thing of the past. It's like in the Lord of the Rings, how when Frodo puts on the ring the huge creepy eye of Sauron can see him, even though he's miles away in the forest hiding under his cloak that makes him look like a rock. And if I learned anything from Lord of the Rings, it's that you definitely don't want to be a Frodo. You want to be a Gandalf, or an Aragorn, or at the very least Elrond. You don't want to be Gollum either, but for different reasons. 

So how do you seize back your privacy and be the mystery you always dreamed of becoming? I have compiled a list of excellent tips to help you become a modern day Madeleine McCann. 

1. Start by deleting all of your social media accounts. This won't be easy, but it will be worth it. It takes 6 weeks to delete a Skype account, so start today!

2. Throw your phone into the river. Then throw your whole house into the river if you can.

3. Get one of those SIA wigs that obscure your face and wear it always.

4. Go to mountainous China and live out your days alone in a cave. You will need a fake passport for this so that there is no record of you leaving the country. When you get to China, set fire to the passport and scatter the ashes along the entire length of the Great Wall.

Bonus points if you: a) have extensive facial reconstructive surgery so that you are no longer recognisable, or b) successfully fake your own death. 

Godspeed, friends, on your journey to total privacy. I hope to never hear from you again.

Two Girls One Yoghurt Story

No Place Like Home

Urban dictionary defines 'home' as a mnemonic device to remember the names of the Great Lakes. 

I define 'home' as being the place that I am always wishing to be. 

The grass is always greener on the other side.

That's just an obscure little phrase that I coined in the year 1860. It's okay if you've never heard it before, many people haven't. The simple truth of the phrase comes from our inherent and enduring want for "what we can't have". An interminable crack in the aalto vase that is human happiness.

It is not difficult to fathom an occasion in which this philosophy is apparent. One notable example may be when we find ourselves in a field and we see a field on the other side where the grass looks greener. But through tainted eyes our perception is one that is sullied by jealousy, or greed, or merely an overwhelming tendency towards general malcontent.

I try to keep this in mind when I find myself wanting to go home. I've wanted to go home for as long as I can remember. I have had a number of places to call home, and the home where I find myself at any given time never seems to be the home where I most want to be. 

From the day I moved out of the house where I lived with my family, and the number of places I called home became duplicate, a gnawing dissatisfaction with whatever my current situation was began to plague me. Whether I was at my parents' house, my hall of residence, or at my flat, the persistent desire to go home arose as wherever I was currently residing seemed to pale in comparison to wherever I was not. In my eyes my other home transformed into an unattainable and mystical wonderland with window boxes of colourful flowers and a deer prancing around next to some artfully placed vines. But whenever I actually made the decision to visit the rose tinted home, I was faced with the harsh reality that I live in a crack den. Not the idyllic cottage from Sleeping Beauty.

Now I am further from my home than I have ever been. And my desire to go home is greater than ever before. 

It is in times like these that I like to think of the iconic 'Alien' as portrayed by James Franco in the cinematic masterpiece / documentary that is Spring Breakers. Alien serves as a protagonist and oracle; the Gandalf of the film. He is effectively Gandhi, if Gandhi had dreadlocks, a grill, and a threesome with Vanessa Hudgens in a swimming pool. 

Wisdom Personified

When Selena Gomez starts to tire of the hoes and the debauchery that is her spring break, Alien profoundly states: "If you wanna go home you can go home, but then you're just gonna be home." Alien knows something that I am still attempting to understand. That the home that I imagine doesn't exist where I am looking for it. What does exist is a place that I have already been. A place that is probably no better than the place I am now. 

And as for the 'home' that I am searching for to bring meaning and fulfillment into my life? It is unclear whether this is a place I have left, or one which I am yet to find. Or if home is truly "where the heart is", then perhaps I carry my home around in a cavity behind my rib cage. 

More likely, the 'home' that we all wish for is intangible. A place which we will never discover. A reflection of the greed and dissatisfaction of our nature, engendering a festering unhappiness that mars the entirety of human experience. 

The place in which we find ourselves is never where we most want to be. It is a cruel irony. But a greater affliction of society is the fact that the term 'irony' is only used correctly in 1 of every 5 uses. This is the real issue at hand. 

Goodbye Cruel World. I'll Miss You.

If you are reading this then I am already dead. Probably. Maybe. This is a precautionary blogpost so that I can make my final demands in case I do die on the plane tomorrow. I know that the chances of dying as a result of a plane crash is like 1 in 14 million but in my head it's something like 1 in 14. I've done so much reading on unsafe airspaces this past week that I've become like 95% sure that the plane is going to get shot out of the sky like the MH17 or King Kong. 

I know that you have to die of something. But this is not the way I imagined that I would die. I always thought that I was going to be electrocuted by a lava lamp. One can only dream, I guess. Being on a plane that is falling out of the sky seems pretty scary though. I knew going anywhere and doing anything was a mistake. My mum said I'll never get anywhere worrying about things like aeroplane crashes. She probably regrets telling me that now since she'll never have grandchildren.  

My biggest regret is never meeting Julie Andrews and telling her I love her. I can't believe she outlived me. Actually, I can. She'll never die. At least I lived to see Gossip Girl end. And at least I never have to grow old. I'll die at my peak like Elvis.

To make myself feel better about my impending demise, I am going to remind myself of some other great people who have died, so I know that I am at least in good company. Einstein. Kerchak from Tarzan. Jin Kwon, my favourite Lost character. Steve Irwin. James Franco (probably soon). JFK. Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. Sweeney Todd. My cat.

As for my funeral / tangihanga my wishes are quite simple. It will be a 22 day long ceremony. One day for every year of my short life. It will be an open casket so that everyone is forced to see my bloodied remains. For the music, I want the Oceanic Six Theme from Lost like in the above video. No one is allowed to say "she wouldn't have wanted us to be sad" / "she would have wanted us to move on with our lives" etc etc because that would be incorrect. I want everyone to remain in mourning for the rest of their lives, much like Queen Victoria did when her cousin-turned-husband Prince Albert died. She literally never got over it and now it is the most beautiful love story ever told. 

I suppose there's a chance I won't die on the plane. It seems unlikely, but maybe, just maybe, nothing will go wrong and I will successfully arrive at my destination just like on the majority of flights. Or maybe the plane will go down but I will survive and be on an island and it'll be just like Lost, which would be probably even more awesome. Anyway, just in case; goodbye. I love u.

How to achieve success and other such life advice

When my family used to go on long car trips together, my dad would make us listen to a book on tape. This book was called 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad.' At the beginning of the tape the narrator explains that this is the story of his two dads and their differing financial situations. Now, these were not two gay dads. This was not an awesome story about one family's battle against discrimination and adversity. Instead, it was a boring story about a young boy who had a poor dad, but his friend had a rich dad, and this rich dad taught the boy all about how to own a business and rake in the cash and whatnot. 

What did I learn from the entire debacle? Nothing. And yet, somehow I have still managed to end up living the high life; employed and rapidly climbing the corporate ladder (in my head). So, in order to help out all those less successful than myself, I have decided to compile a list of tips to help everyone be just like rich dad. 

1. Dress the part.
The age-old adage 'dress to impress' is an important one to follow once you are attending business meetings with international skype calls to the head office in South Korea. The ideal workplace attire would be something like David Bowie meets Macklemore, but it is difficult for me to emulate this personally, because I only own two pairs of pants. So instead I just try to wear neutral tones, and always keep my fingernails trimmed even though it has always been my dream to grow them long enough that I can file them into claws and then take off into the night sky. My hair is another story. Much like Miley Cyrus, my hair can't be tamed. It is as wild as the rugrats were in 'Rugrats go Wild' and every time I try to tie it up I miss enough of the back that I'm pretty much walking around with a jedi plait. For some reason no one ever notifies me about this so it is never until I get home hours later that I realise I have spent all day in the public eye as Obi Wan. 

Me (pictured above) attending a job interview

2. A firm handshake is a superior handshake. 
A fundamental part of employment is asserting your dominance in a business-type scenario. How better to do this than in the ¿handshake?: a widely performed gesture in the working world. It is a rule of the handshake that whoever comes out of it with a still functional hand is the winner, so grip that hand like you are Jack and Rose gripping the bow of the Titanic. If you don't feel their bones being crushed into a fine powder in your grip then you are not clasping tight enough. 

3. Retain your individuality.
The workforce is a cruel place that takes happy-go-lucky free spirited people and changes them into mindless drones. Mostly, we don't even notice that we have forgotten who we are until Mufasa appears in the clouds and tells us. So, look for anything that will keep you unique. Perhaps carry around an ear trumpet, or keep a framed photo of Yoko Ono on your desk. However, if you are born in September be sure to keep that quiet because September is the least unique month. Probably upwards of 90% of the world's population was born in September. A number of years ago I asked my mum why this was. Her response? "It's nine months after new years, if you know what I mean ;)." It was so awkward I never spoke to her again. 

In summary, no one needs to waste hours of their life listening to Rich Dad, Poor Dad. That is something I would not wish upon my worst enemy. Instead, keep these wise words in mind: Life is like monopoly. There are banks, there are houses, there are thimbles. However, unlike monopoly, life is not a game. Unless we are talking about the Game of Life because that is a game. 

Green Living

I have been a vegetarian my entire life. I guess you could say I was very forward-thinking as a baby. I guess you could also say that my parents were vegetarians and that I didn't have any say in the matter. My parents have been vegetarians for as long as I have known them. Back in the motherland, where prion diseases were rampant and at large, they had to quit their meat eating ways in order to survive. Now that they are safely in New Zealand where all of the cows are sane, they have remained vegetarian. I don't know why they never went back to eating meat, I assume it's an old-dog-new-tricks situation. 

Although this was a lifestyle choice that I did not choose, I would not change anything. Vegetarian life has presented me with a great number of benefits. Namely that I never have to eat anything that is bleeding. I have a decreased likelihood of getting the diseases associated with the consumption of animals; colon cancer, rabies, salmonella. No one ever got salmonella from vegetables, they got it from salmon. I have also never been subject to any cognitive dissonance concerning the inner 'I love animals but I love meat' turmoil. 

My grandmother once told me a story about a time when she attempted to make fish head soup in her younger days. I don't know why anyone would ever decide to make fish head soup, it seems like something people should try to avoid doing at all costs, but my grandmother has always been a real OG and lived by her own rules, so there is no telling her what to do. Anyway, she beheaded a fish and began boiling the head in a pot on the stove. As it simmered away she was suddenly stricken with unease. She could not rid herself of the disconcerting feeling that the fish head was looking at her. She stared at the fish head's lifeless eye and it stared back. She continued to stare, transfixed on that unblinking eye with its unyielding gaze. Eventually, my grandmother was unable to continue boiling the fish head and ended up disposing of it, and never making fish head soup again. 

I'm not really sure of the relevance of this story. Perhaps it simply says that I am glad I will never have to eat anything that is watching me. But I feel as though there could be more to it than that. When my grandmother thought that the fish was watching her; forced to acknowledge the undeniable truth that the fish was once a living creature, conscious of it's surroundings, able to experience pain, with an understanding of the world, albeit a limited one, she was unable to follow through with boiling its head. Maybe if there was a cow's head included in every pack of mince at the supermarket, less people would buy them. Probably just because a decapitated cows head would be really disgusting, though. 

Nonetheless, it is probably easier to cook a faceless slab of meat and not acknowledge where it might have come from than to knowingly feast on the butchered remains of Bambi's mum. Perhaps if people knew they were about to chow down on Boxer from Animal Farm or every character from Charlotte's Web, then they would be less inclined to do so. 

All in all, I know that vegetarianism will always be the life for me. If Einstein, Da Vinci, and Russell Brand chose to be vegetarian, then it must be right. Also, Paul McCartney, the eye candy of The Beatles, with his well-known slaughterhouses-with-glass-walls quote. I suppose I will never truly know if I would have been vegetarian now, had i not been raised as such. There is always the possibility that I would have had an insatiable hunger for flesh like those baby tigers that people attempt to domesticate. But instead, as fate decreed, I prefer a diet consisting solely of chickpeas and satsumas. A classic combination. 

Why do anything ever? We're all going to die anyway.

Every time I sit down at my desk and get out my textbook and my study notes and play the Vilvaldi - Four Seasons youtube video, in preparation for some serious study timez I am suddenly struck by a disturbing, yet persistent thought - why am I doing this? Is this because I want good grades? And a good job? And a life full of riches and success? Do any of those things actually matter?

No. They don't matter. Nothing does. 

The horrifying truth is that one day I will be dead, and so will everyone I know, and so will everyone they know, and so will all of their children. Even Julie Andrews will probably die one day, although I get a little bit choked up just thinking about it. 

Life is full of sad realisations; there will never be another episode of Lost, you can't live off canned beetroot, herpes is forever, but none are sadder than the realisation that life is fleeting and with each second that passes we draw closer to an unavoidable and eternal non-existence. 

I don't remember the first time I found out that I was going to die one day. I feel as though I might have always known. I was one of those sage-like guru babies that fly around the mountains and grant wishes to lost travelers. I just find it so strange how everyone just knows and accepts the fact that death is coming for us all. It should technically be the most traumatising news in the world. You'd think there would be more public outrage but there weirdly isn't. Maybe it's because there is no one to complain to. I like to complain to my parents. 'You can protect me from sunburn but you can't protect me from perpetual nothingness? What kind of parents are you?'

There is literally no point in doing anything ever, because once you are dead it won't matter whether you lived a life of happiness and good fortune or a lived under a bridge. It won't matter if you had lots of friends, or a family, because they will die too. It won't matter whether you were smart, or funny, or really good at knee boarding. Nothing matters. I could describe myself as a nihilist but I don't see the point in that either.

Some people manage to find meaning through a religion of some sorts. I hold a great deal of respect for those people because they possess the astounding ability to believe in something that is so obviously a complete fabrication constructed in order to deal with the deeply terrifying notion of death. I'm pretty sure that Freud compared religion to "childhood neurosis" and Freud knew what he was talking about because he was on crack. 

My dad once told me to "keep my options open" vis-à-vis religion. As if when I die and it turns out there was a God all along I might be able to slip through the gates of heaven with a late admission form. I just feel as though God, being all omnipresent and so forth, would definitely catch on. And anyway I don't know if I can take advice from a man who wears socks with his sandals. My dad himself can only be described as vaguely religious at best. On his annual Christmas church visit he puts a whole $20 in the collection plate. Good one dad. As if that will make up for an entire year of complete negligence and indifference towards religion of any kind. 

I guess the leitmotif of it all is that since nothing matters, I should never have to do anything that I don't want to do. Why spend even one second studying when it will all amount to nothing when you are totally dead? So put down those books, and instead spend hours staring at the ceiling in the dark contemplating the nature of existence.

It's way more fun.  ???

Santa is Dead

There comes a time in everyone's life when they are forced to face a horrifying truth. They will never again be a child. They can no longer legally bike on the foot path. They are too tall for the playground at McDonalds. It's is no longer appropriate to wrap their towel around their head like a turban in the swimming pool changing room in Year Seven and reenact the the final scene from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. 

For me, it wasn't these things that lead me to the final realisation of my lost childhood, but rather it was the fact that Christmas Day is drawing nearer, unaccompanied by the uncontainable excitement it was marked with in my youth. I remember the time of advent calendars and Christmas stockings. A time when decorating the Christmas tree was a privilege, and not just another household chore, right up there with emptying the dishwasher. We lose a lot of things in the transition into adulthood, our Christmas spirit included. We may as well all turn into the Grinch or that duck with the room full of money and the little spectacles. 

One of the things that children possess that adults lack is the childlike ability to believe in crazy things. Some children actually believe in Santa. Think about how crazy that is. First of all, why would he give away presents to all the children in the world? One of the things we learn when we grow up is that nothing in life is free, least of all those shoes with the little wheels on the bottom. But more than that, how are the children coerced into believing that Santa is able to afford presents for EVERY CHILD IN THE WORLD. There's like 2 billion children out there. And he travels the entire world in one night. That's only possible if he's in one of those superfast rockets that break the sound barrier. But he's not. He's in a sleigh. And how does that sleigh fly? It's not like Prancer and Vixen and Cupid etc, have wings. 

The whole story is preposterous. I can't believe that four-year-olds everywhere are falling for this. But even when we are old enough to realise the lunacy that our parents have been feeding us, and we discover that Santa was just them all along, that doesn't necessarily mean that our Christmas Spirit has died. Because, well, we still get presents. I can only assume that that is what it's all about. 

But when receiving presents is no longer cause for excitement, we begin to comprehend something. For me, this was very gradual. All these years Christmas has been masquerading as the funnest day of the year, under the guise of presents and Christmas lights on people's houses. But what children fail to understand is that Christmas is not more fun than all those other days in the year. It's less fun. 

Think about it. What does Christmas really entail? It's a day that promises non-stop joy, when what you really end up with is having to spend the entire day at some relatives house, listening to your parents talk to strange adults, while you sit on a wicker couch drinking off-brand Milo. The only positive thing that comes out of these Christmas's for my family is that my brother and sister and I learnt that there would come a time in this life where all we would have was each other and that we must band together and be there for one another etc etc, but that was namely because all the adults were talking and we had no one else to play Jenga with. 

Overall, I suppose I just wanted to draw attention to the fact that it is an unavoidable part of life, the moment when we realise all that we have left behind. We begin life with a beautiful picture of a world full of brightness and opportunity but as we grow older we are forced to wake up to the harshness of reality. And once we do we are not able to go back . We will never again be able see the world through the uncorrupted eyes of a child. We will never again get as excited about Christmas as we could we were young. And we will never again be able to believe in Santa Claus. 

I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I mean, imagine the craziness that would transpire if billions of adults worldwide believed that there was a man associated with Christmas, and that you had to be good all the time to be rewarded. Madness.