My 2022 Brisbane Christmas

Christmas in Brisbane has a new favourite must-do with the Town Hall Christmas light show.

As Christmas inches closer to being upon us and the year draws to a close, I feel it's important to reflect on the year that has been. Compared to my life this time last year, 2022 has been a year like no other! It's been a year full of changes, and throughout it I've almost been able to sense each change before the moment actually arrived. Its bizarre, but for a year that began with great uncertainty, it has ended in complete clarity. And of course, in returning to my wife's hometown of Brisbane after 14 years of living away, rediscovering some old favourite haunts and finding some new ones along the way such as the Town Hall Christmas lights (above) has been a lot of fun too!

Back in Brisbane, and enjoying the Town Hall Christmas Tree.

Let me highlight what a difference a year can make. Back on December 7, 2021 I wrote a post titled #21 Twenty Twenty Twenty One! In it I reflected back on a decade of my own blogging, and confessed how two years of surviving through a pandemic-interupted world had, I guess for lack of a better word, eroded my own positive outlook on everything. It was a bit of a final sign-off for the way I had been blogging for the past decade, and an open-mided reluctance to just see where the next year would take us.

If there's one thing the pandemic era of 2020-2022 taught me, it was that people have used it as an excuse for anything. It divided a lot of people's views. Vaccination became a polarising conversation point. Interest rates began an upward trend as spending ballooned at home through online shopping, and now that the price of utilities, groceries and pretty much everything else has gone up on account of inflation, the world hasn't been left in a good place as a result. The gap between the haves and the have-nots has never been more noticeable in my lifetime than it has been heading into this Christmas.

So what has changed for us since last Christmas?

After bidding Caloundra farewell in My Sunshine Coast Finale, and seeing our daughter get married in August, my wife is now settled in her new full-time career in the medical field, and an 18 month long back complaint is now firmly in the rear view mirror. Meanwhile, I've ended the year having just completed my 3rd book in the past six months since relocating back to Brisbane. Being highly productive with my time has become the new driving force of my life, and I'm writing this after having just printed my goals & objectives chart for 2023 to stand alongside my desk. And believe me, there's some big goals there!

Christmas light show at Brisbane City Town Hall, Australia, 2022

And so this is Christmas... along with being the opening lines to a John Lennon song, its also a time to reflect on the good that still exists in the world. I've embraced Christmas this year probably more so than any other year in my life. I think now more than ever, we all need it, and I honestly can't wait for 2022 to end so that I can look back upon only the highlights. It's time for my wife and I to be thankful for all that we have got, for our children, their partners and some nice food and wine waiting to be consumed in epic proportions come Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve for our family is huge. I think it's the anticipation that it will be Christmas in the morning that makes that sense of excitement reach a crescendo! Nibbles that start in the early afternoon whilst still cooking in the kitchen, and all that preparation for sitting infront of the TV to watch the Melbourne Christmas Carols whilst eating more food, and trying not to drift off into a food coma. It's the best night of the year to be together as family!

This year I've decided to add a new Christmas Eve tradition for our family. Ahead of some big calls I've made for 2023, whilst editing a Christmas Special video for my YouTube channel and my Philden Model Railway blog, I had a real sense of clarity halfway through editing it, that the moment was right to call time on producing anymore content for my model railway channel. So I went all-out in producing a 15 minute Christmas model railway special, complete with over-the-top Dad jokes and a dancing puppet. Why? Because it's Christmas. Now each and every Christmas Eve, Bill the Puppet will play Santa Claus by giving a small Christmas Eve gift to everyone who is present in our household... only after they've watched the above video on YouTube in its entirety.

My Christmas model train video is the culmination of having produced 21 such videos and how-to talks over the course of 2022. I just feel that I have reached the point where I've taken the platform as far as it can be taken, although I still have another two Philden Model Railway books to produce in the first half of 2023. My Christmas Puppet Special however, will be the gift that keeps on giving for years to come, and it is guaranteed to get at least one view each year in our household on Christmas Eve if our guests wish to receive an early Christmas Gift!

So, Merry Christmas everyone! May you not forget the meaning behind this festive season. May 2023 bring some new and exciting challenges to look forward to. And may we never reach a point in time where we have small groups say they are offended by the word Christ, advocate for vegan-friendly ham and turkey, or simply want to no longer celebrate what for many is the only time of the year where families get together and have any real spiritual connection and experience a bond of love. Is that really too much to ask?

Until next year...