Few people can grasp just how much I love Christmas, especially since I am far from religious. Not even I can really explain it. This time of year just makes me incredibly happy. People are different, there is so much unprecedented kindness. People make and effort to make complete strangers happy.

Like today, I hauled ass onto the Moggill Buz to go home for the first time since Wednesday, swiped my go-card and started to look for a seat. It wasn’t that the bus was crowded it was just that every square inch of it was covered in crepe-paper, or christmas cards, or stockings, or paper baubles. I took photos, but they don’t do it justice. If you really want to see then FB/Twitter stalk me.

This bus driver must have spent hours turning his bus into a Christmas jungle. The ceiling was dripping in green crepe leaves and vines and colourful streamers. He made a sort of brown cave thing in the middle and stuck styrofoam gallahs to it. The bag racks were filled with wrapped up boxes and gift-bags and stockings. It looked fucking mind-blowing. I spent the whole bus trip just looking around with a big, dumb grin on my face and when I got to Taringa I didn’t want to get off. It was the best damn bus trip of my life.

It made me think about the fact that if he had wanted to do something like this to his bus at any other time of year it would a have been accepted. Not by Translink, who would have dismissed it on the basis of health and safety or something, nor by the general public, most of whom would have thought he was mad.

That’s why I love Christmas, it’s ok to be a little bit mad as long as it makes people happy. HYPE DC gave away free shoes and vouchers. shop clerks who are seldom roused from some zombie-like state suddenly start smiling at you and saying, “Merry Christmas”. If you are a zombie clerk you actually start to have absurd feelings of goodwill towards those asshole strangers who want proscuito sliced for them 2 minutes after closing time. Everything is beautiful, people put up lights, you get to see your family or dearest friends, and I love the cooking, especially if you get to do it with these people, or at least for them.

Anyone who says they don’t like Christmas is a fucking cunt. period.