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It’s Christmas – take it too far, please.

via Christian Hoegsberg on Dec 18, 2012 | 1 comment

If you’re under the age of 14, you don’t need to read this. I can’t help you.

In fact, if you read this, know that you are fully equipped to help me and the other disillusioned grownups that are sure to cross your path these days. Your age makes you a certified holiday expert. These days, you probably walk around thinking about presents and cookies with huge expectations for the time coming.

Granted, I often walk around thinking about cookies too, but that’s more of a permanent state, and the presents on my mind are the ones I have to buy for other people to enjoy. I’ll probably end up buying the last of them in the local mall, which for the time being has turned into Mordor — packed with grunting trolls pushing their way through the crowd and little orcs picking their noses as they wait to sit on Shopping-Mall-Santa’s lap.

Yes, Christmas looks a little different to grownups, than it does to kids. While I may see the plague-ridden lands of Mordor when I enter a mall in December, kids will see a magical world of endless opportunities to have a blast.

If I would have had my way as a greedy little 7 year-old, I would be getting only G.I. Joes for Christmas. I would be eating cookies for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Our Christmas tree would be poking through a hole in the ceiling. There would be snow inside as well as outside. I would be watching Home Alone and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation on repeat for 24 days straight and it would still be funny on day 24. But most importantly, both our house and garden would be packed with distasteful and fantastic plastic ornaments and inflatable Christmas figures.

Today, things have changed. Though the greed might still be intact, the magical fascination with Christmas is suffering, as I suspect it is with a lot of grownups. So here is my suggestion to all the Christmas challenged people out there:

Get some inspiration from the lovely, crazy and wonderfully childlike Christmas geeks out there, who are not afraid to turn their house into a winter wonderland.

Maybe you fancy a stylish Christmas tree like the ones you see in fashion magazines strictly decorated with silver ornaments, but any child will prefer a tree packed with colors, funny figures, and variety.

Maybe you prefer a discrete chain of light bulbs around your front door or around the tiny tree in your front yard, but any child will marvel at the crazy beauty of these winter wonderlands ready to be explored.

Children see magic where we fail to, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there to be seen. We have been trained to ignore the magic. Our attention has been diverted from it to the point where we look straight through it.

So go find the magic. Let it materialize for you again. If you have a child nearby, become the child’s apprentice — he or she will know what to do. If you don’t, venture out on your own and let the magic find you. I promise, you wont regret it.

{The magic is out there.}

Christian Hoegsberg

Christian is a geeky freelance marketing consultant, technical writer, occasional tennis coach, and yoga novice. He can be found in his flat in Copenhagen working and/or lounging next to his cat, at various Indian or Thai restaurants waiting for takeaway food, on the clay courts of the local tennis club, walking around the nearby lake (fast, but never running), on grass fields with his soccer team displaying his rapidly decreasing shape and reluctance to run, and sometimes on his rusty bike in the city hoping it will hold together just long enough for one last destination.