KEY POINTS:
I love everything about Christmas. I love the lead-up - decorations (no matter how naff), piped carols, window displays, parades, wide-eyed children visiting department store Santa grottos, nativity scenes in historic country churches and Sunday School children wrapped in white sheets and tinsel, acting out Christ's birth in
the manger. At age 7, I was Gabriel - the only time I've ever been an angel.
Christmas baking is an excuse for giving; we've made five Christmas cakes - for us, for staff, for the kids, the local foodbank, and one for the good folk who bottle and label our wine. I've ordered the turkey, mixed the mince for the fruit pies, compared recipes for the plum duff.
I know it's all stupid food for a New Zealand summer, but we've tried the chilled jellied Christmas pud to follow cold meats and salads and it's just not the same.
I joined a singing group a month ago - just for fun - and this week we sang carols to the oldies in the local rest home. There was much giggling and off-tune accompaniment, exchanging of small home-made gifts, and a promise to return soon.
I love the parties - dressing up for cocktails, or donning a sun dress and straw hat for lazy afternoon vineyard parties. I don't hate Snoopy's Christmas - it reminds me of teenage woolshed parties, sweet kisses on the hay-bales and long hot Hawke's Bay summers.
Then there's shopping, a treat in itself even more delicious than opening my own presents. Back in September I started planning what to give to whom. I enjoy cryptic conversations with family members, making mental notes when I get a hint of what they might like.
Surprising someone is 90 per cent of the fun. Exhausted from traipsing the streets, you bring home mysterious parcels and hide them in the house. Currently there's stuff in my wardrobe wrapped in blankets which nobody is allowed to touch.
As a child, at this time of the year I'd be nearly bursting with excitement, torn between peeking and ruining what I knew would be excruciatingly thrilling on Christmas morning when we woke to find pillowslips mysteriously containing exactly what we needed. How did Father Christmas always get it so right?
Right now I'm so excited about the presents I've organised for my husband (hankies, if you're reading this, Colin), I have to keep a careful check on my mouth so I don't spoil my own carefully laid plans.
I may well be a wide-eyed Pollyanna, but I don't care. Who wants to be a cynical grinch at this most bounteous time of the year?
Nobody warm-hearted takes pleasure in knowing about those who are lonely, broken-hearted, or suffering violence on Christmas Day, but being miserable and abstemious won't make others any happier. Instead, donate food or presents to those who do help - like the Sallies or your local church.
This year it's been trendy to save the planet and give green, or, as Oxfam states, "put an end to bad presents" by buying a pig for an East Timorese family, or building a toilet in Papua New Guinea. For $300, CBM New Zealand will provide a prosthetic limb for someone in one of 113 countries around the world.
All good causes, but luxury has its rewards. If you want to improve standards of living in Botswana or Namibia, give diamonds. I swear they are a girl's best friend and, according to the New York Times, if bought from a company like de Beers, a ticket out of the Third World for some Africans.
So-called blood diamonds are easily avoided. De Beers refuses third-party diamonds sold by rebels for arms, and the company has helped take Botswana from one of the world's poorest nations in 1967 to one of Africa's most prosperous countries.
The de Beers' story is fascinating and too long for this column. Founded by Cecil Rhodes, who came up with the marketing genius that a diamond is forever a symbol of love and devotion, it's an African company through and through.
None of this is politically correct, of course. Not like giving an African village a goat. But the mega-carats my beloved gave me last Yuletide, in the form of beautiful drop diamond earrings bought through the Kimberley scheme, probably did more to improve the net wealth of Africa than a container of goats, pigs and prosthetic limbs could ever achieve.
