It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...not to me.

I made a promise to myself that if I kept this blogging show on the road, then whatever I put up on screen would be 100% unbridled honesty. It may not have people agreeing with me, but I'd like to think I was respected,even a small bit for being honest, albeit at times, brutally.

I used to love Christmas as a child. And I mean LOVED it. Well, except that time that Santy gave me the long finger and didnt hook me up with that He-Man Castle Grayskull set. I legit thought I didnt get it because I was, dare I say, "bold". I later found out later in life that jolly ol' St. Nick shafted not just innocent, naive Paulie-boy here. It also led me to question how this fat man in a red suit can be in multiple places at any given one time. Did this man have shapeshifting abilities? Was he a chameleon of somekind? Why are his fingers yellow? Did Santa.....smoke cee-gars? Say it aint so. But enough of my long running feud with Kris Kringle (by the way, Claus....we're gonna dance somewhere down the line).

Only in September, did I see tinsel going up in Argos. Thats funny, I thought. Those crazy Argos dudes...always up to something. Then, to my chagrin, selection boxes went up. Two weeks before Halloween. The inner child that had a full head of hair started kicking the side of my leg. "Is this really happening?" Okay, he didnt say that, but it was near enough.

To me, Christmas happens on Christmas week. Not the 1st of December. You know what Christmas FM can do,too!! But it seems,commercially, no one seems to care. And for a lot of families, its going to be really tough this year, thanks to our maligned (to be as polite as possible) government. Not just with being able to put a few quid together to buy presents, but for some it'll be the first Christmas without a loved one. That is the worst pain of all. Look at that family in Cork. Imagine what its going to be like for them.

I knew I said my second blog would be more uptempo (I wrote one last night and have it drafted (itchy fingers!),so I will stick that up at some stage) but I can imagine for some, the joy of Christmas is getting tougher and tougher to find every year. I look at a picture at Christmas time of when I was a little one with Bobby, our Alsation dog. Probably 5 I'd say I was, I reckon. That was happiness you couldnt put any bit of a material price on. THAT, to me, is Christmas.