“Why my kids will never have a photo with Santa Claus.”

I want to qualify everything I am about to write with this; I am aware that I am giving Ebenezer Scrooge a run for his money. The Grinch and I, we could be besties. I am basically grumpy cat.

I love Christmas. I really do.

I love everything about it, from Handel’s Messiah, a two and a half hour epic of classical music, to watching my son lose his mind opening presents with his grandparents.

I’m on board with pretty well every dodgy Christmas tradition you can name.

Fake trees, fake snow, fake snowmen.

Roast turkey and Christmas pudding despite the fact it’s 35 degrees in the shade.

Christmas movies (Charlie Brown’s Christmas anybody?)

Getting up at the crack of dawn with a raging hangover as you stayed up late wrapping presents from Santa in exactly the right paper the night before and over-indulged on the eggnog.

Baking 17 different kind of cookies that no one really eats because there was already far too much food.

But there is one tradition I just can’t bring myself to get on board with.

I'm never taking my kids for a photo with Santa.

I know. I just stole Christmas straight from the arms of my one-year-old. How could I possibly deny her a relationship with Santa?

I'm not taking them for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I just could not be bothered. Shopping centres in December are bad enough. Just the prospect of hanging onto two impatient, annoyed, hungry children as we wait in the (epically long) queues makes me twitch. Trying to find a carpark. The Christmas kitsch everywhere, the fact that my children will 100% look like this when placed on Father Christmas' knee; it doesn't bear thinking about.

Secondly, I don't really understand it. I blame my parents for this one. My brother, sister and I, we were never taken to have our photo with Santa. Strangely, I don't feel like we missed out though. Maybe there's something magical that happens when you have that special time with Santa that I don't know about because I never got the chance to find out.

THANKS MUM.

Thirdly, you really want to take a hugely expensive but ugly photo of your kids with a strange old dude every year? (Sorry, I'm sure yours didn't turn out ugly. Please see the first paragraph of this post. I told you, I'm basically Scrooge.)

Finally, it's just a bit weird isn't it?

Isn't it?

Not in a misplaced stranger danger kind of a way. I get that the strange old dude who volunteered for the job of having thousands of kids sit on his knee has had a police and working with children check. (Okay, maybe in a misplaced stranger danger kind of a way.)

Shouldn't Santa Claus be a mysterious man from the North Pole that you can use to threaten your child with if they're badly behaved for at last the two months before 25 December? He should be a dude that you write a letter to, not a minor celebrity that you shell out $50 to for the privilege of a photo.

Yes.

I am the grumpy cat of Christmas.

#sorrynotsorry

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