The Christmas I Imagined

When I was a child, most of my Christmas came from cards. Snowy houses with glowing windows, reindeer moving through winter streets. I didn’t question how any of that fitted with an Australian summer… where it was already pushing 40 degrees, the flies were relentless, and the cicadas were doing their best to drown out the carols. Somehow it all belonged to the same magical logic.

I even imagined that one Christmas morning it might somehow snow inside our lounge room, settling on the tree, the carpet, the furniture.

Sometimes I miss that small window in childhood where imagination had free rein, before reality stepped in…