Herald on Sunday editorial: Five more sleeps until the perfect holiday

Good cheer reigns as workplaces wind up for the holidays, families come home from abroad, plans are made for relatives to get together on the day. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

Just five more sleeps. Four working days. Christmas cannot come soon enough. It is, as the song says, the most wonderful time of the year.

Good cheer reigns as workplaces wind up for the holidays, families come home from abroad, plans are made for relatives to get together on the day. And this year, a "super El Nino" almost guarantees a sunny day.

The weather pattern may bring its problems later in the summer and autumn, especially for farmers, but for now it is glorious.

Our oceanic climate is normally cool and unsettled until Christmas. Not this year. Summer temperatures arrived in November and by now we are more than ready to roll out the barbecue, put up the tent, go to the beach.

Christmas is so good in the Southern Hemisphere, so warm so dreamy with the long holiday to follow, that we do not have much to say about it.

When writers or dramatists try to put their minds to it, they pretend pleasures are problems: the useless gift, the irritating relative, the schmaltzy music and kitsch and the tree bleeding its needles on the carpet.

But even this jaded pose is enjoyable. We know it is not serious, just another way of basking in the pleasure of the season.

We always read that Christmas in the sun is somehow not right, but something tells us, truthfully, that the white Christmas is better in dreams and prettier in the cinema than it is in the chill winds and slush of the real thing. We are blessed, or most of us anyway.

Christmas in the sun is less perfect for the poor, as charities such as the Salvation Army, St Vincent de Paul Society and the Auckland City Mission know too well.

Every year the City Mission reports more destitute people than ever lining up for food. Their needs are a challenge to the Christmas spirit in everyone.

'Tis the season of goodwill, and generosity can extend beyond the home and family. Good-hearted people donate non-perishable items for the mission's food parcels and some give up much of their Christmas Day to help to serve a traditional roast dinner to the less well off.

Selflessness, for most of us, extends no further than shopping for gifts and, goodness knows, that can be hard enough.

If you have left it until the last minute, you have five days, counting today. You are going to wish you kept that resolution last Christmas to keep a look-out for the ideal gift throughout the year.

You know you can never find anything at the last minute. It will be the wrong perfume for her and a shirt he will not wear. Who will really mind on Friday morning?

With children around, discarded wrappings around, the sheer delight of giving and getting, is wonderful. Have a warm and happy Christmas.