Xmas Wishes from Allan Dick

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Christmas is the best tine of the year. Even though it’s a Christian celebration, the meaning has moved from  being purely religious to one of goodwill where most people feel warm towards each other and old differences can be forgotten — maybe only temporarily, but forgotten.

That’s all soft and schmalzy, but it is, nonetheless true.

This has been a year of tremendous change for me — apart from The Recession making business life difficult, I lost Kate, my pal of almost 12 years and now we have my 15 year old grandson Dillon come up from Dunedin to live with us.

Everyone tells me that will bring a fresh set of challenges as the generation gap will be so wide as to be impossible to bridge. But I’m going to approach this so that we’re mates — not grandfather and grandson.

Christmas morning will be modest and then we’re having a traditional dinner with a friend from my teenage years to whom life hasn’t been so good. Somewhere I want to watch the movie “Love Actually” which, despite what stuffed-shirt Herald Film critic Peter Calder said, is one of the best movies of its kind and just right for Christmas.

After that, we pack up and head for Nelson where the Navigator is booked to spend six days punishing herself walking a track, while Dillon and I will lie on the beach, look at girls. Then it’s back to work researching a story for NZ TODAY on Nelson.

But Christmas.
My earliest Christmases were spent in Auckland and the first I can remember must have been 1943 when Dad was off on the Leander and we had an uncle who was in the Airforce staying at home on leave.

He and a mate felt so sorry for this little snowy headed bloke whose Dad was away and whose Mum had no money for presents that they went to Woolworths and bought one of everything from the toyshop counters.

I was not quite three, but I remember going into the living room and seeing three pillowslips stuffed to the gunwales hanging from the mantelpiece. I had so many toys that Mum rationed then, half went into a box in the top of the linen cupboard and they were swapped every two months or so.

I remember the Sally Army band, on the back of an old flat bed truck playing carols outside our house that morning.

My next memorable Christmas was 1946. Dad was home from the war and I was going to school where the rumours were heard for the first time — “Santa Claus isn’t real, it’s your Mum and Dad who give you the presents.”

Outraged, I confronted Mum and Dad who denied it flatly. Of course there was a Santa Claus!

That Christmas morning Mum had to wake brother Colin and I and ushered us, sleepy-headed, into the living room — and there he was! Santa Claus! He was real!

There were “Ho, Ho, Ho’s” and handing out of presents before he departed. But I never actually saw him go, I was too busy with my pre-war Hornby train set, bought second-hand , but just like new, from a man in Mount Eden I learned many years later. When I looked up, Santa was gone!

I dashed out the back door to catch a glimpse of him flying off in his sleigh pulled by the reindeer, but all I got was clear blue sky.

But boy, did I have a story to tell when school started again. “Santa Claus is real — he was at our place.”

I was so excited, that I never stopped to ask where my Mother’s youngest sister, my Auntie Mina was, that morning. She appeared some time later when Dad had set up my train in the lounge and was showing me how it worked.

She never ever admitted to being Santa Claus. But, I have my suspicions. . . .

It certainly kept a young boy’s faith another couple of years.

All the very best to all of you wherever you may be.

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