The great holiday grudge match

Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to the ultimate holiday grudge match. In the red corner, weighing in at 7056 kilos of ripped wrapping paper, the heavyweight champion of two millenniums . . . Christmas ‘‘The Splurgefest’’ Day!

And in the green corner, coming in with all-day pyjamas, box set binges and left over turkey, is the slovenly, the chill, the Box-ing Daaa-aay!

Honestly, it’s not really a fair fight, is it?

My Christmas Day starts with a swim in the sea.

It’s something I’ve done for years when the weather is good; tootle down to Wellington’s Days Bay pier and have a little paddle about in the early hours when the sun has just come up.

I do it because it’s relaxing and because I know the rest of the day is going to be a horrible nightmare.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my family, I love getting presents and I love eating loads of scrummy food.

But much like going 10 rounds with a prize fighter, Christmas Day is exhausting, physically, emotionally and mentally.

Christmas Day doesn’t fight fair. First of all, I’ve usually been up until all hours baking, prepping and wrapping stuff.

I like to make my gifts, usually afghan biscuits from the world’s best afghan recipe. There are 20 people in my family and they get six afghans a piece – you can do the maths.

Then there’s our Christmas dinner, which we’ve always – very sensibly – portioned out to each family.

I usually make the pavlova, raw fish and help out with the secret family curry recipe that’s a pivotal element of the Klein family Christmas.

In other words, hours of cooking before the ‘‘fun’’ has even begun.

Then we pack everything into a car and drive to whomever’s been foolish enough to agree to host the thing this year . . . and that’s when the real work begins.

I’ll greet everyone I’m related to. Nice.

But then I’ll have to make conversation with them, enduring way more conversations about corns, inappropriate questions about my love life – deep breath – and criticism of my job/politics/ hair/choice of dish soap/second helping of pavlova than I imagined possible.

To stop myself from saying something I’ll regret later, I will eat so much food I will be at risk of internal injury.

Then it’s presents. And the concomitant feeling of isolation and despondency that comes with opening a parcel containing a book by John Grisham and realising no-one really knows me at all.

I’ll now, also, be sentimentally attached to a giant pu¯ keko vase my darling Aunty Marge, who is 85, gave to me. It’s quite possibly the ugliest thing I have ever seen, but it’s mine now, so suck it up.

The pu¯ keko’s eyes will follow me around the room accusatorially for the rest of the day.

A small person will undoubtedly use me as a jungle gym as some point – probably right after that ill-advised second helping of pav.

And my surly teenage nephew will make me feel positively antediluvian with just an eye roll.

I’ll pour myself a drink at 11am and not find it again until 3pm, when I accidentally kick it over and spend the next 15 minutes trying to mop it up from the carpet.

I will help wash approximately 700 plates, 345 bowls and 9000 cups.

If I’m lucky I’ll be able to avoid Uncle Phil who’s been giving anyone who’ll listen a 10-point treatise on the merits of US President Donald Trump, but even so, that quiet, leisurely swim I had at 7am will feel like another life.

On a more serious note, I will throw loads of decorations, wrapping paper, packaging, broken and joke toys, and food waste straight into landfill. Christmas is incredibly wasteful. We can do better, we must do better.

Ding, ding, ding.

Boxing Day, sweet, quiet, slightly melancholic, yet blessedly uneventful Boxing

Day, rolls off the ropes in round two ready to rumble.

If, God love you, you’re feeling energetic, there’s plenty to do. Maybe a beach or a bush walk? How about a picnic with leftover turkey sandwiches? The world is our very relaxed, easygoing oyster.

The Boxing Day sales will be on – at the very least, almost anything Christmas themed is immediately slashed to half price – but if you can’t or don’t want to face the crowds/rampant commercialism, what about a movie?

Boxing Day means new releases of the cheesy family variety. This year there are three: Jumanji 2, Peanut Butter Falcon and Cats. The new Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker, should still be in cinemas, too.

Don’t want to leave the house after all? Then don’t!

And this is Boxing Day’s knock-out blow: Unless you work in retail or at a cinema – in which case, thank you for your service – it’s the one day of the year where no-one needs you to do a single thing.

You don’t even need you to do anything except maybe roll to the kitchen to make yourself a plate of delicious leftovers, before rolling yourself back to the couch to watch another episode of Bojack Horseman.

You can even spend the entire day in the new pyjamas cousin Roland bought you. Bliss!

So I’m calling it. The winner by a knockout in the Great Holiday Bun Fight Grudge

Match is . . . Boxing Day!