Wrapped in Christmas

Who loves Christmas more?

Where we live, in largely Christian Alberta, it’s a fairly popular holiday.

With a slow build-up in ads and TV spots through October and November until the air waves and print media offer almost exclusive rights to the season by the time December rolls around.

Oh, the TV/Newspaper moguls toss in a bit of news/entertainment as a sop to the die-hard ‘wanna know what’s going on in the world’ people . . .

But who loves Christmas most?

In the Stringam household, Christmas was a season on hold.

Right through August.

I am not making this up.

Little Sister would quite literally come home from her first day of school in September and drag out her Christmas records.

Which she played from then through to January.

This morning, the song, “Snoopy VS the Red Baron” came on the radio and I knew every word.

Every. Word.

Sigh.

And then she would start wrapping.

She wrapped everything. Beautifully and often . . . creatively.

Old toys.

Kitchen gadgets.

Books.

Games.

Clothing.

The spoon you had just used to stir your chocolate milk.

If you were slightly inattentive, your glass of chocolate milk.

And the cookie.

If it wasn’t nailed down, or too heavy for her to lift, it got wrapped.

And then, if one wanted to use said-item-that-one-had-just-laid-down-only-a-moment-ago, one had the joy of unwrapping it first.

One year, Mom came up with the startlingly clever idea of giving Little Sister a box of ‘wrapping stuff’.

Paper, tape, scissors, ribbons, bows, tags, etc.

Which was . . . how do I put this . . . well and totally used.

There was an ad on TV some years ago which showed a completely-wrapped dog with an equally wrapped ball.

It was hilarious.

It was shot at our house.

Not really, but you get the picture.

So, back to my question.

Who loves Christmas most?

I’m proposing the name of my Little Sister.

For all of the above . . .