All Wrapped Up. Holly Smale
can tell I love Christmas because I start celebrating it in the middle of August.
I do it subtly, obviously.
A tinsel brooch here, a life-size plastic reindeer with flashing nose there.
“Harriet,” my stepmother said this year when I wheeled it into the hallway.
“Annabel,” I replied, making my face as angelic as possible. “Did you know that the majority of male reindeers lose their antlers in winter? That means that Rudolph was almost definitely a girl. Don’t you think we should be reminded of this every day of the year?”
Annabel laughed and put the reindeer back in the garden shed, along with my ‘Jingle Cat – Meowy Christmas’ album and the cinnamon incense sticks I’d hidden behind the radiators.
So I think the answer was no.
In September I constructed a battle of pink versus white sugar mice on the living room carpet, and October was spent sticking thick wads of cotton wool along the edge of every external windowsill so it looked like it had just been snowing.
“Harriet,” Annabel repeated, which means November was spent cleaning it all off again.
Now it’s the middle of December and I’m finally allowed to start marking the occasion, I’m so excited I feel like a shaken can: except instead of soda, Christmas is fizzing straight out.
I have made a neat list of my favourite Christmas animals, and my favourite Christmas foods, and my favourite Christmas songs, and my favourite Christmas lists.
I’ve created a gift plan with associated shopping map, and a detailed Q and A to hand out on Christmas morning so I can accurately deduce how much people really like their presents.
Together, my best friend and I found a traditional mince pie recipe from a Tudor recipe book written in 1543 and cooked them perfectly. (Then threw them all away, because there’s a reason mince pies are now vegetarian.)
I’ve made Christmassy pie charts and PowerPoints, line graphs and crosswords.
I’ve even had a couple of epic festive-themed fights with my parents, because laughing at a letter I wrote to Father Christmas when I was five years old is just not entering into the appropriate spirit of things.
And – most importantly – I’ve decorated.
In fact, thanks to school having just broken up for the Christmas holidays, my house is starting to look like something Santa would visit incognito out of sheer embarrassment.
I have Christmasified everything.
With barely contained happiness, I have glitterised and spangalised, frostificated and shimmerised. I have sparklificated and made up a whole range of festive verbs and written them in my notepad.
But it doesn’t make much of a difference.
Because four days ago, in a dark TV studio in the middle of London, a beautiful model boy held my hand.
I had my First Ever Kiss.
And now it doesn’t matter how much sparkle I spray, or glitter I drop: it feels like I’m decorating from the inside out.
The shiniest thing here this Christmas is me.
Here are some other important festive Firsts:
Not that I’m trying to compare one kiss with significant festive moments that changed the entire course of human history.
But I think I know how their inventors felt.
It may have changed the course of mine.
“And,” I tell Nat, happily bouncing up and down on the sofa with a tiny red frosted T-rex on a string clutched between my hands, “we spend an average of two weeks of our lives just kissing. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Mmm,” my best friend says, taking the dinosaur off me, frowning at it and putting it back in the decoration box.
“Plus each kiss burns up to three calories,” I inform her, handing her a giraffe coated in green glitter. “That means it is twice as productive as sleeping.”
“Wow,” Nat says, putting that away too.
“And studies have shown that we remember ninety per cent of the details of our first kiss.” I bounce up and down a few more times with a tin-foil robot. “Although in my case, I think it might be even more.”
Like, ninety-nine per cent at the very least.
I remember everything.
I remember the quietness after everyone abruptly left us alone in the television studio, and the unexpected flush in Nick’s cheeks when he told me he liked me.
I remember the way he reminded me all over again of a lion: big, wild hair and cat-shaped eyes and a mouth that curved upwards at the corners.
I remember the deep breath he took as he stepped forward.
The way he looked at every part of my face.
The way I studied every inch of his.
I can still see the ski-slope shape of his nose; smell the faint lime-green scent of his breath; feel the tickle of a dark curl against my forehead and how his bottom lip was warm and dry.
I can still feel the throb in my ears, and the heat in my cheeks, and the way my heart skittered around my chest like a deer on ice.
Literally still feel it.
Maybe I should work on not remembering quite so much. Kissing causes a sudden surge of dopamine and adrenaline through the system, and mine appears to have lasted three and a half whole days.
“Gosh,” Nat says, handing me a boring gold bell and pointing firmly at the tree. “That. Is. Amazing.”
“I know.” I beam at my best friend. Nat’s been camped out at my house pretty much constantly since The Kiss happened. She claims it’s to help me decorate, but I think I know the truth.
It’s so I Don’t Do Anything Stupid.
Which is totally unnecessary. I don’t even know what that would be.
“And,” I continue breathlessly, gazing in rapture up at the beautiful, sparkling Christmas tree, “scientists say that five out of twelve cranial nerves in the brain light up when you kiss someone. You are literally connecting with your minds. Isn’t that just the most romantic thing you’ve ever h—”
“OK,” Nat says calmly, throwing a piece of red tinsel on the floor. “Enough.”
I stare at it in consternation, and then at her.
“What are you talking about? You can never have enough tinsel, Natalie. Never. It is a physical impossibility.”
Like time travel, or the ability to put a chocolate bar back in the fridge once the wrapper’s open.
“No, I mean enough of this.” Nat points at me. “Enough about kissing. Enough about Nick. Enough hopping up and down while I do all the decorating. It’s time to stop now.”
Huh. OK.
My adrenaline and dopamine levels are so high they’ve actually managed to seep out and exhaust my best friend too.
“I’m sorry,” I say, obediently hanging a silver bauble on a lower branch. Nat’s right: