Going to a friend’s wedding is a little bit confronting.

As every good female-targeted movie involving a nuptials that aren’t the heroine’s will tell you, watching someone legally shack up inevitably and undeniably forces some rather harsh comparisons to come to mind. Particularly when it’s the first wedding you attend as an adult guest in your own right (now more “…and family” invites for me!) and not as a family member. I have held the humans farmed in the bellies of my friends, and visited the shared homes of long-term lovers I went to school with, but I have never before attended such an outwardly permanent event in my double decade of life. Until the weekend.

There I was, wearing horrendously impractical footwear and an un-washed (I got busy, and it’s not like it was a pair of used underwear…) three-dollar skirt from Vinnies’ sinking in the sand (literally) without a life partner to prop me up while a girl born just days before me was the picture of put-togetherness (with her entirely functional shoes) nonchalantly melding her existence with another person. To add insult to injury, this other person also had a six-year-old son. Given I still sometime harbour the urge to knee a toddler in the face (purely because they’re the right height, and I may or may not have some underlying problems with aggression, but that’s another story for another time) and I still scramble over my family members to snag the best piece of chicken, I would say that my nurturing skills aren’t exactly up to scratch yet.

This isn’t a post about my current relationship status, and I won’t be listing neither the pros nor the cons of being some form of romantic agreement with one or more other actually existing parties. This isn’t a post about making New Year’s resolutions to change my life for the better. This isn’t even a post in which I miraculously come up with some vaguely sensible solution/perspective on my problem that feels like an oddly convenient ending hastily concluded due to impending sleeping/reprimand for pushing a deadline.

It’s just bloody strange to stand at the somewhat public declaration of an intention to enter a lifetime of legally binding affection and eternally required kindness with another person. Especially when said friend is the girl who lost their camera down a drain at Schoolies, used the phrase “a bit sag” to describe her underwear and almost definitely smoked a cigarette in a boob tube.

It makes me wonder about the particular journey I will take from scrag* to sophisticated, and the kind of stark comparisons people will draw from Future Dannielle to Koala-Poncho-Wearing-While-Riding-A-Bucking-Bull–Dannielle. Will I suddenly become adept at making decisions? Is the day coming that I know how to come off as a normal person capable of not being terrible for the duration of my life? Will I suddenly stop being so selfish about all aspects of my life, namely food, and start genuinely offering the white meat of a roasted chicken to people without secretly hoping they’ll opt for a thigh instead?

This thought process, as all thought processes of mine almost certainly do, led me to scrutinise every aspect of my life, reading far too much into every detail of my existence.

While my friends were posting on social media about their life-changing trips overseas this festive season, I was merely content to have received a shirt that read “Merry Christmas ya filthy animal” from my brother-in-law. When most people were relishing in their week-long getaways at various coastal regions, I was over the moon about being able to read the Sunday paper almost from cover-to-cover. I don’t own an iron. I can’t regulate my bedtime in a responsible manner. At said wedding, I was double-fisting glasses of champagne filled to an unquestionably un-classy level in fear the bar tab would run out. Earlier this evening my dinner consisted of dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets.

As I said before, I’m not going to draw any conclusions, but I feel that you, dear reader (hi Phoeobe!) may have already reached some of your own. Apparently, I have quite a climb in front of me.

* I am in no way implying that my friend was a scrag, although she DID wear a raa raa skirt. I was referring to my general state of scragginess in the past, which may or may not have involved heavy eyeliner, severe side fringes and an un-explained attraction to Trevi… a love which continues to this day.

So obviously the whole daily thoughts thing didn’t work out. But I have a couple of very reasonable reasons as to why I shirked my self-imposed and equally self-indulgent writing responsibilities that really benefit nobody. Number one, I had to make a trip interstate over the weekend, and my Saturday night involved somewhat overly-hydrated chips with strangers, my Sunday morning involved free eggs and the always-fantastic Bad Santa, and my Sunday night involved n RACQ patrol vehicle and a very late homecoming. Number two (this is perhaps the most forgivable of the reasons), it’s Christmas.

And it wouldn’t be Christmas if I wasn’t over-tired and baking at inappropriate hours of the night (it’s currently 11.10pm).

And so, in an act of solidarity with you, dear reader (Phoebe and Mum) I am letting you join in with me, in both spirit and olfactory sensation. And as I have exhausted all creative ability by using alliteration with “writing” and “responsibilities” (I’m very impressive), I can’t be arsed to write an actual column at this time.

So here’s a recipe I prepared earlier just for you.

Maybs clean up the filthy words if you’re showing it to your mum. Or not, if she’s a cool mum. If that’s the case, tell her I have BOTH Richard Gere and Julia Roberts and send her over.

You will need:

2 and a half cups of plain flour (before we start, I adapted some measurements from weights because the scales take too damn long to operate and they cause for a really annoying putting away measure in the Maguire kitchen. So there may be a time when you need a little more flour, or a little less. Usually it is more, because I a pretty godamn gluttonous when it comes to the butter measurement.)

1 cup of brown sugar

5 heaped tablespoons of margarine

1 heaped tablespoon of butter

1 beaten egg

4 tablespoons of golden syrup (this shit is sticky and you can never fully get the full tablespoon off the tablespoon, so I just throw in about an extra spoonful to balance that out. But that is your call to make, you may just find a better way to measure out the syrup.)

2 teaspoons of ground ginger

2 teaspoons of baking soda

half a teaspoon of nutmeg

half a teaspoon of mixed spices

half a teaspoon of cinnamon

an oven

a big bowl

a saucepan of a just bigger than small size

mixing implements

Christmas cheer

A sifter

Trays

Baking paper (because foil is a foolish alternative)

The Home Alone soundtrack to play in the background (Mariah Carey’s or Bing Crosby’s Christmas albums will also suffice. Rod Stweart is fine, but I wouldn’t go for a So Fresh Christmas Hits because they allow any kind of smut to fill the gaps. Sure, they may have Destiny’s Child and maybe ONE classic, but the rest is shithouse and you don’t want that vibe to go into your gingerbread – it will make the biscuits flat, just like the sound of someone killing Santa Baby (someone who is either Eartha Kitt or Kylie Minogue. Kylie actually nails the slutty Chrismtas songs).

-1) I forgot to put this in, until I got to step 11, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to go through and change all the numbers now. Pre-heat the oven. Very important!

1) First thing you’re going to want to do is turn the oven to about 170 degrees Celsius. Now, I have a fan forced oven so perhaps you need to go a little hotter.

2) Crack egg into cup. Ensure egg is not stillborn chicken. Beat unfertilised chicken egg with a fork. Set aside.

3) Grab your big ass bowl and start sifting dat flour into it. Then mix ONE teaspoon of the baking soda. The ginger goes in now too. I always take the opportunity to spice up my life a little by being less than gingerly with the ginger. Meaning, I sprinkle in a little or a lot extra, depending on my mood. I also throw in the spices, the nutmeg and the cinnamon. Obviously, this is a recipe and not a binding contract, so please don’t feel like you have to stick to the ticket – go with the gut if it tells you things. (Actually, this is FILLED with gluten, which means that your gut may just speak to you a lot. I’m concerned. I take NO responsibility for any discomfort you may feel after ingesting this gingerbread.) Beat this gently with a fork until just combined and then make a bit of a well in the middle. Put that to the left (next to the box with everything you own).

4) Now it’s time to break out the saucepan, and by that I mean, grab the saucepan and your butter and imitation butter. Butter up that saucepan boy! Then add the syrup and the brown sugar (I put the butter in first in case the saucepan is too hot and burns the sugar products. That’s not good. The butter forms a gentle, fattening layer of protection, which cushions the blow for the sugars and helps them to succeed in dissolving. I guess the butter is the wind beneath sugar’s wings, which would make butter the Hilary Whitney from Beaches and the sugar would be C.C. Bloom – clearly because Bette Midler’s hair is bright orange for most of the movie so it’s an easy way to remember. This story much less sad than Beaches. I suggest you watch it if you haven’t already seen it.)

5) Gently heat up the contents of the saucepan on a medium/low heat. I turn the dial about a quarter of the way round. Keep stirring that bitch until the butter is all melted and the sugar is dissolved. I want that heart attack-inducing broth to be smooth, you hear!

6) Sprinkle the second teaspoon of baking soda into the saucepan, and turn the heat up a notch or two. I put it up to a whisker off half way (on the lower side of half, not the hotter). Keep stirring, but much more slowly. After a while, the mixture will start to get a little lighter in colour, expand and feel a little airy. This is a good thing. Keep stirring gently until you get to a point where you’re a little nervous to let it continue.

7) Remove the saucepan from the hotplate and pour about half of the mixture into the water-less well you made in you bowl of flour and friends. Then tip in the egg. Stir that for a little bit immediately in case the egg starts to cook in the mixture (this has never happened to me, but I have imagined what it would be like and I imagined a broken Dannielle in it’s aftermath).

8) Pour in the rest of the saucy mix and stir completely.

9) Here’s where you need to use your best judgement as a baker. Sometimes, this is all you need to do, sometimes, the mixture is a little on the runny side and will need more flour. It should form a dough, but it shouldn’t be overly stiff – it should be flaccid enough to feel like a biscuit and not bread (because gingerbread is not really bread – it’s a massive misrepresentation of the product, but that’s what it’s called and I can’t change that). If you can’t grab a bit off without having it run through your fingers, I’d suggest adding more flour. But only sift in a bit at a time. Now is the time for gingerliness.

10) Forget that shit you saw mothers doing on Christmas movies where they roll out the biscuit mix and get fucking flour everywhere. Those women were dickheads. All of them. Because all you need to do moisten your hands with a bit of water and roll clumps of dough into balls and place them on a tray. I know gingerbread men are cute, but fuck me they are way less fluffy and delightful than a ball of the stuff. And if we want to get all feminist here (which I almost certainly always want to do), all we really need from men are the balls anyway.

11) Set your timer for about fifteen minutes. Check after about 12. They should start going a bit brown at this time. I wouldn’t say that you’re aiming for golden brown, but more of a tan. Think about three or four shades darker. You don’t want to go to far because you can’t exfoliate burnt off.

12) Cool the little bastards. Now, if they feel a little soft, don’t be concerned, they should be super spongy. They WILL firm up. Just try not to handle them too much or they will be indented and scarred for life (daddy issues, commitment problems, the works!)

13) … you know what to do.

When you’re loosing your enthusiasm for Christmas, you need to bring in the big guns.

It’s that time of the year when I would be shovelling evidence of the festive season and my inevitably over-thought interpretations of it down the throats of people within a 30 kilometre radius of me via an ever-so-slightly compacted column space in a free publication, however, given my current location and slightly more serious (I did drop a Ghost reference in an intro recently) role, I haven’t had the capacity to do so. This, in combination with overbearing lack of the pressure of an actual enforced deadline and an incompetence to enforce a proper bedtime, my festive writings/rants have been uncharacteristically absent.

Alas, the world has been pardoned of unnecessarily wordy ramblings of a mind reading far too much into insignificant occurrences, utterances or cognitions tainted with a festive slant. But in light of recent uneventful events (watching three Hugh Grant movies in less than 24 hours), I have resolved to do something more useful with my time. And, as I have no real marketable skills and have an inflated sense of importance and self-genius as a result of peaking academically in primary school, I deemed recording the workings of my mind in such a manner that they can be communicated to others on a potentially global platform as a useful use of my time.

But as I began to peck at the keyboard in a satisfyingly noisy manner, it dawned on me that perhaps the current impending festive season hadn’t been exciting enough to blow out of proportion in my mind. Perhaps my literary laziness is matched by the insignificance of which I had attached to the season. It’s not from alack of trying: I spent a good portion of my paycheck on a fake plastic tree and glittery, coloured balls of commercialism, I’ve wrapped gifts, and I’ve even baked a batch of gingerbread for my colleagues despite misplacing my recipe and not having measuring spoons (Jamie Oliver doesn’t need them, but apparently I do). But something feels off this year.

Perhaps a diminished excitement about Christmas is a symptom of passing years, and that, much like getting letters in post, the joy of such an occurrence in our youths is overshadowed by the attached cost and unhappy obligation. Perhaps it is the opposite, and I have only just reached the mental age of a seven-year-old Cindy Lou Who in The Grinch who airs her disenchantment with the festive season via song. Perhaps it’s because Christmas, in my aforementioned new role, is less of an excuse cool the boilers and rest the Linotype, and more of a logistical nightmare due to the rest of society’s selfish tendency to value family time over distributing words and pictures collated on low-quality paper. Perhaps it’s because my only friend close by is my smoothie maker.

But I have a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with the frightening lack of Christmas movies in my personal collection. Don’t know how it happened, but the only Christmas films I have are Diehard and Die Harder. The great festive flicks in my past are currently in an “entertainment cabinet” more than 300 kilometres away. The first two Home Alones, The Grinch, the few Christmas episodes of Girls of the Playboy Mansion… all the classics are beyond my viewing pleasure.

Without the John Williams musical scores, the bright green Jim Carries and a no-knickered blonde sledding down imitation snow, my heart apparently can’t be merry. The joy of Christmas cannot swell my heart without first having been re-affirmed for a character in a predictable plot with unexplained church bells. But, desperate times call for desperate measures. And in a bid to rid me of my festive indifference, I have resolved to re-ignite my passion for a collection of dates that used to be met with much anticipation and was the bringer of great joy in the most passive way possible: sitting down and staring at my TV, milking my existing DVD collection for any skerrick of festivity. Because if anyone can teach me the true meaning of Christmas, it’s a bare-footed, dirty-singleted Bruce Willis. Yippe-kay-yay.