While out on my usual morning constitutional, I came across this house adorned ready for Christmas. How crazy I thought, as our Pohutukawa blooms and locals are heading to the beaches, that so many of us ‘grownups’ in New Zealand still treasure this chubby fellow from the North Pole. Look at him, abseiling, climbing a ladder, and parachuting in. I only hoped his presents weren’t melting in the sack. I tucked my phone in my pocket and kept walking, on the hunt to see if there were more interlopers from the North Pole around.

It was a fantastic day, hot, sunny and not a patch of snow to be seen in the gutters, under trees, or anywhere quite frankly, except … frosted on a shop front window.

I was on a quest now: a pre-Christmas hunt through the hot streets for more signs of Santa and his reindeer, when I’d thought I was just out for exercise! I jogged down steps to the waterfront; a few bits of tinsel, nothing too dramatic along here I thought, and walked left up a hilly street. Oh yes, a treat here, at this lovely two-storey home.

There another blown-up Santa was, waving from the balcony to the passersby, like royalty. I resisted waving back. He looked really cool though, while I was sweating profusely as I trudged up the hill. However, we walkers are stoic, and I hadn’t completed half the distance I normally would. Across, along and down, and back to the water.

Not a sign of blow-up Santas down here. Perhaps it’s time we changed his hot red tunic for colourful swimming trunks, and he’d be out there diving off the yachts for sure. Up past the shops towards home, and whoops, here’s a reindeer in the window. I take a photo. Oh, Rudolph loves bubbly too; probably why he has a red nose, never thought of that before.

But, for all that many of us here in New Zealand cling to the storybook Santas of childhood, we get to celebrate Christmas before anyone else in the world! I’ll be thinking of all you bloggers on the other side of the date line hanging out for your Wednesday, when we are unwrapping our presents on a Wednesday morning which arrives before yours.

I wish you all the very best for the 25th, whenever that is, perhaps watching snowflakes fall.

Merry Christmas