Cheerful Spirit

It's that time of the year where a million-and-one people seem to be putting up their Christmas tree pictures on Facebook, shops are stocked with red and green and the internet is going even more mad than usual as it entices us to spend, spend, spend!

For me, I'm not sure I've caught the 'Christmas Spirit' yet. I mean, I've tried. We watched 'Miracle on 34th street' this week and it did make me smile... but I still don't feel really 'Christmassy'. I suppose for me the run up to Christmas seems to have become more about meeting deadlines, that teaching project I had to present today on Tic Disorders and just trying to wrap things up so that January isn't altogether hopeless. Is it just me or does anyone feel the same?

I feel like people get tuned in to Christmas a lot earlier than me every year. I hear people talking about finishing their Christmas shopping before I've even STARTED mine. I'm totally shocked by carols when they start being sung; as though they've just crept up on me. You'd have thought that I'd realise by now that December follows November EVERY YEAR.

I wonder whether it is more about consciously putting ourselves into the place where we can catch the Christmas spirit. I don't really think hospitals or libraries are the places to do it. You need to be somewhere that you can sing and dance.

So, I've come up with a plan of ways that I can get the Christmas spirit more this year and it looks something like this:

• Go to the German Christmas Market in Birmingham and take photos
• Get a real Christmas tree and decorate it with red and gold
• Go out Carol Singing whenever the opportunity presents itself
• Do something kind and out of the blue
• Read the book of Luke in the Bible
• Buy a Santa hat and wear it somewhere embarrassing 
• Bake something Christmassy 
• Have all gifts ready to go by 14th December so I have a week to work out what's been forgotten

Looking at that list is already getting me excited! It's beginning to look a LOT like Christmas... 

...I better meet all of those deadlines so I can enjoy it!!!!!!