The Dell

Every December, like clockwork, I’m struck by the sudden realisation that Christmas is apparently happening again. It’s on the same date every year, yet somehow it sneaks up like a mischievous elf with boundary issues.

Menus! Guest lists! Fairy lights that have tied themselves into a nautical knot! And of course, that internal negotiation: Do we host? Do we flee? Do we pretend loadshedding took out the whole suburb?

The panic arrives suddenly: one moment you’re sipping a glass of Chenin Blanc, the next you’re Googling “How to fake your own disappearance for 48 hours”.

But beneath the chaos, the burnt cookies, and Aunt Carol’s annual retelling of the time she met a B-list celebrity at OR Tambo, there’s magic. Warm, loud, slightly unhinged magic.

It might be the wine. It’s probably the wine. But it’s also the people—mad, dramatic, familiar, and ours.