My favourite memories from Christmas were this year! I grew up as a poor kid. Christmas was kind of hard every year. I know my mum did try to make it special but more often than not, I just felt disappointed as a kid. I had no belief in things like Santa, or God, tooth fairy’s or Easter bunnies because even as a kid, I found it difficult to believe that these imaginary figures would randomly choose to favour some kids over others for what felt like no apparent reason. Then as an adult, for my own kids, I did what my mum tried to do and I did my best, but still, Christmas was often disappointing and stressful and I often had to choose between celebrating Christmas or paying my bills. So I stopped celebrating it all together, opting instead to just give my kids a bit of cash and take then shopping on Boxing Day. Then this year in general I took bigger risks, made bigger sacrifices, and I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily been easier but I actually made enough money to make ends meet and then some. We did Christmas, and I invited over my family, and the guy I’ve been dating. There was cliche Christmas games, family banter, my kids got heaps of presents from relatives and it was just the first Christmas I remember having where I didn’t feel stressed. I felt actual joy. And then for a few days after I just felt relaxed and content, enjoying my massive amount of time off work because as fate would have it, I didn’t lock in any contracts over Christmas, and I think if I had I would have worked it, but I think the universe gave me a gift this year which was just being able to spend time with my family without feeling an impending sense of doom. Magical.