'Tis the season for shopping, also known as the joys of consumerism.
We'd love some advice on how to find that joy, as buying Christmas gifts for us is a bit like fingernails down a chalkboard.
We must sound like the Grinch, but we do like Christmas trees, carols and pudding.
Plus, Rudolph and the little drummer boy are still pretty cool in our book. And who doesn't love a silent night?
But it's the shopping that makes things feel like a not so wonderful Christmas.
We were walking through Charlestown Square recently and everything started to feel a tad suffocating. The perfume section can do that to a man. All those scents make no sense.
They were playing the song Last Christmas, but reports of the death of Christmas have been greatly exaggerated. Christmas is alive and well, as can be seen in this photo taken at a shopping centre in Sydney.
We were down in the concrete jungle recently and found ourselves reluctantly walking through the aptly named "Birkenhead Point Brand Outlet".
The traffic was horrendous. We had flashbacks of Charlestown Square car park, where we inadvertently got stuck in a parking spot set aside for medical centre staff.
We tried to reverse out, but sat there for five minutes with no way out. The line of traffic had no end.
A medical staffer showed up, so we asked her if she had a remedy for car park madness. And also if she thought we'd get booked for parking there.
She didn't think so and agreed that getting out of the spot was more difficult than buying a Christmas gift for Mum.
"Sometimes I have to stop the traffic just to get out," she said.
We turned good Samaritan for a brief moment and stopped the traffic for her, so she could reverse out. Was this the Christmas spirit everyone talks about? Perhaps we weren't the Grinch after all.
Getting back to Birkenhead Point, we noticed a massive line of people and had to wonder what all the fuss was about.
Our first thought was the place must be selling the best coffee in Sydney. We moved closer to the source of adoration, expecting to smell coffee at any second. Or was the line-up for a photo with Santa?
But it wasn't a coffee shop and Santa was nowhere to be seen. The line-up was, in fact, for a Polo Ralph Lauren store. We had no idea the brand was so in vogue.
If Santa was around, we would have told him face-to-face [sitting on his lap would feel a bit weird] that all we want for Christmas is not to see another shopping mall until at least, say, April. Even May.
It's true that the Grinch did try to steal Christmas and famously said: "Hate, hate, hate. Hate, hate, hate. Double hate. Loathe entirely." Mind you, he also said: "Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more".
But if anyone does find the meaning of Christmas in a polo shirt, let us know. We'd love to cotton on to the simplicity of that.
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