I must admit, I feel a little ‘meh’ about Christmas.

It started when I was in my early twenties and worked in a Christian bookshop for five years. Every year we endured a month of non-stop Christmas carols that played throughout the working day, while we flogged off Christian Christmas crap to the masses.

On top of that were all the carols and official religious Christmas festivities at the church where I worked on weekends. My teeth still are set on edge when I hear some carols. There’s only so many times you can hear ‘Gloria in excelsis deo’ without starting to think up cartoons like the above to mock it.

I guess you could say I have love-hate feelings about Christmas, because while it does still drive me up the wall sometimes, I do still love it. I have great memories of celebrating Christmas as a kid, and the exciting time it was with presents and trees and honey biscuits and Christmas lunch with family as Handel’s ‘Messiah’ played in the background.  We’ve got our own version of that in our house now, with the added joy of the temperate Kiwi summer and pohutukawa trees in full red bloom in view from our backyard.

So over the next few weeks, I’ll be getting into the spirit in the best way I can think of and posting some Christmas (or ‘Christ-mehs’) cartoons. Hope you like ‘em. And if you hear my teeth grinding in the background, don’t worry about it. I’m smiling through those gritted teeth.