(courtesy Hallmark Books) If ever a season felt completely at home in a comic strip, then it’s Christmas in Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip. You could, of course, also make largely the same case for Halloween and while Linus and the Great Pumpkin is inherently memorable, overall its Christmas Continue Reading
Christmas 2023
Book review: The Christmas Book Club by Sarah Morgan
(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Reach) There’s something about the most wonderful time of the year that makes us feel as if anything is possible, that all the baggage of the year can be wiped away in the effervescent glittery escapism of Christmas. While the new year is traditionally the time Continue Reading
#Christmas kids books reviews: Pink Santa, Dharma the Christmas Llama, Dear Santa, I Don’t Need Socks, Christmas at the North Pole + Little Unicorn’s Christmas
(via Shutterstock) I am a big kid at heart. While I have well and truly grown up and I pay taxes and go the office (thankfully not all the time) and do very adult things, there’s a part of me that loves adventure and fun and busting the day-to-day banality Continue Reading
Book review: Christmas at the Beach Hut by Veronica Henry
Is it possible to tire of Christmas? Or in the case of Lizzy Kingham, who LOVES Christmas with furiously bright red and green twinkling lights, great bundles of tinsel strewn everywhere and a kilo ton of fruit mince pieces for every meal, to tire of all the effort that goes Continue Reading
Animated festive movie festival: The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday + Trolls Holiday
(courtesy IMP Awards) The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday So, you’re likely used to the rather appealing idea that Christmas is all giving and doing unto others etc and not about grabbing and stealing and having a narcissistic time of it. Well established as that may be as a Continue Reading
Festive movie review: 1000km From Christmas (A mil kilómetros de la Navidad)
(courtesy IMDb (c) Netflix) If you’re a Christmas-aholic or a Christmas tragic or whatever term of festive devotion is near and dear to your tinsel-filled heart, you might find it odd, nay perplexing, that anyone might not love the most wonderful time of the year quite like you do. After Continue Reading
Ring in the festive season with Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas
(courtesy IMDb (c) AppleTV+) Christmas is an inherently exuberant time of the year. Whether you choose to lean into that exuberance is another matter entirely, but regards of whether you’re a tinsel addict or a Scrooge, there’s no escaping the fact that the most wonderful time of the year is Continue Reading
Christmas book review: The Holiday Switch by Tif Marcelo
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) Christmas is, no matter how you slice it, a pretty romantic time of the year. Unless your soul is made of concrete and your heart of thickest steel, you can’t help but feel happily uplifted and lightened by all the twinkling lights, the joy and the Continue Reading
Festive movie review: Love at First Sight
(courtesy IMP Awards) Is there such a thing as fate? The answer to that huge, almost unanswerable question, likely rests on which side of the freewill vs inevitable destiny line you call on; if you’re a freethinker, the idea that you are somehow shackled to a particular outcome is odious Continue Reading
It’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas ads … time to engage your heart (and yes, wallet)
(via Shutterstock) One of the old chestnuts, and not the fun kind that get festively roasted an on open fire, that comes out is every Christmas is how evil it is that this most iconic of festivals has been completely and utterly commercialised. And while, yes, perhaps we have taken Continue Reading