Opening Night in Canberra for CIFF! (And your chance to win a double pass)

I went to see it last Saturday too, lots of fun, but you do have to stomach yourself for full frontal nude elderly men. And DDogg? The hero kid in the movie had the same idea!!!

Ohh, I love Christmas and everything Christmas-related!

My parents were immigrants and never knew about the Santa tradition, so the first I heard about it was in kindergarten. I was soooo super excited, there were going to be reindeer and a tree and something about chimneys and some magical old man who delivered presents! I told my parents all about it and, on Christmas Eve, hung up a lego bucket on the end of my bed. (I was 5, my socks were tiny, and I was being helpful to Santa cos clearly a bucket’s easier to fit presents in.)

Christmas morning – I woke up all happy and leapt to check inside my little bucket…. and it was totally empty! The dream had been shattered 🙁 Sure, there were presents under the tree from mum and dad, but it just wasn’t the same, dammit! I wanted my share of presents from the mythical old man.

The Christmas after that, the parents finally caught on to the ‘pretend to be Santa’ thing and on Christmas morning, there was a cassette player for us ‘From Santa’. Sadly, it was defective and we had to take it back to Target the next morning to get it exchanged. So much for the magic!

(But I still do believe in Santa and I still love everything about Christmas – except that it apparently starts in September now :P)

Highly recommended, though I’m not sure I can ever think of Santa the same way again. Pretty cool film, typically Finnish humour (chuckles across the cinema after a gag at the expense of Russians), a great antidote to the inevitable repeats of “Love, Actually” and other similar saccharine fare that we’re usually subjected to over the holiday season.

It’s on again next Saturday night at 6:30pm, check it out. My thanks to Dendy, CIFF and the RiotACT for the tickets, much obliged.

When we were younger, my brother and I would set traps to catch Santa each xmas. It usually involved rope snares near the xmas tree, but one year we decided it was a good idea to hide a loaded rabbit trap under a piece of red cloth with some biscuits on top. Luckily my parents saw us doing it, otherwise it could have ended in tears and broken fingers. When we woke in the morning we rushed down to the tree and the trap had been sprung. In the jaws of the trap was a bit of cotton wool and a note that said “Nice trap, got me on the beard…better luck next year. Santa” BEST XMAS EVER!!

well done, smiling. no need to be polite now – whoop it up! 😉

Looks like a great film, and I note that we’re seeing it in Canberra well before its official premiere in Helsinki on December 3.

Not really a hilarious story, but back in 1974 my parents and I were living in Darwin when a big stupid cyclone came through and kinda wrecked christmas for everyone. Mum and dad remember seeing the roof come off the house and thinking “yeah, best be moving into the bathroom around about now”. They, along with many others, then quickly made their way to the army barracks during the eye where they saw out the rest of it safely.

I still have one surviving toy from my first ever christmas, a slightly creepy looking roly poly clown thing that chimes with internal bells when you nudge it. I’d like to think it’ll eventually become a valued family heirloom but it bothers my wife a little and the kids haven’t really ever taken to it either.

Breaking a priceless family Heirloom with a cork for our champaign breakfast…

I thought Black Peter took them all to…

(dun dun DAAAAAAAAAAA)

SPAIN.

My family has always treated Santa Claus as a carrot and a stick for good behaviour by children.

The positive incentive is the usual story – plenty of gifts for the good kids.

The negative incentive is more elaborate. Generally naughty children might receive handfuls of sawdust or lumps of coal, possibly no gifts at all. But the WORST children encounter the labour force that makes Santa’s philanthropy possible.

Santa kidnaps such misanthropic kids by stuffing them in his infinately large sack. They are then taken away to the North Pole – both inaccessible and inescapable – to work underground in vast toy factories, where over decades they become shrivelled and deformed. These children are tasked with designing and building toys that get better every year – but which they will never, ever be allowed to play with.

That’s where Santa’s Little Helpers come from.

A few years ago my brother did something hurtful to upset the rest of the family in the lead up to Christmas.

In an attempt to try and make amends (and with no time to shop) he bought everyone gift vouchers and to try and lighten the mood he wrote “Get your own gift!” in all the cards.

Unfortunately when it came time to open presents, the gift vouchers were missing from the envelopes as he’d left them in his wallet and forgotten to put them in!

Suffice to say reactions were priceless, and we still have a dig at him every year.