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.