The Three Muses - Tidings of Comfort and Joy

It's difficult for the average Aussie to get his or her head around being all rugged up against the cold at this time of year so forgive me for throwing in a peek at what people are wearing down here in the southern hemisphere.  Santa was painted by me.  Credits for bits and pieces in the first picture go to Gypsy at Scrapbookgraphics.

Here is my Christmas story:

A Christmas Caper or “Seasonal Secrets”


This is a true story. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Christmas for my family means a lot of undercover operations, cloak and dagger work, great secrecy and subterfuge, much feverish plotting and even meddling with the calendar. It is dangerous but exhilarating. You may ask me WHY? Well, at least two members of my family fall into the bah humbug category at Christmas. They cast a gloomy spell and a pall over our celebrations. One who shall be called  Ebenezer T. Stooge has no excuse other than he is a surly piece of work or, as we Australians might say, a miserable git. The other has a bipolarized brain which leads to bizarre behaviour and streams of less than acceptable language in front of the children. The solution? We celebrate Christmas Day at lunchtime on Christmas Eve. We prepare the feast in secret. We organize ourselves with military precision. We invent alibis. We congregate at a neutral venue, hoping that there will be no unpleasant surprises. So far, so good. At last we can relax and have a great time. We open our gifts and enjoy watching the children open theirs. We eat our Christmas feast. On Christmas Day we have our happy memories of the day before. Hopefully, the unwelcome would-be guests are so self-absorbed they haven’t even noticed that we managed to have a good time in spite of them and practically under their noses.