By now several of you reading this are feeling the effects of ingesting an average 7000 calories per day for the better part of a month or so. My yoga pants are now skinny jeans and every maxi dress is my new best friend. I might also need a new liver but every drop of Prosecco was worth it.

This is also the time of year when most Trinis realise they have no chance in hell of losing the Christmas weight before Carnival, and panic sets in. I literally broke the scale when I stood on it yesterday. (I’m not even kidding. The plastic window cracked and pinged off the bathroom wall.) I interpreted this as A Sign and immediately purchased Jorge Cruise’s Happy Hormones, Slim Belly off Amazon.

A good portion of this week was spent lying in bed nursing a post-Christmas cold (inevitable result of forced close proximity to germ-harbouring friends and family) and reflecting on a frenetic Christmas season. Christmas is my favourite time of year. I love everything about it – the food, the music, the fellowship – everything. Well, almost everything. Why is it that far too often Christmas brings out the worse in us?

Take driving for example. Why do people drive so badly at Christmas? Do The Powers That Be circulate a secret memo at the beginning of December mandating cackahole driving and dickhead parking? How else can one explain the upsurge in straddlers, those wonderfully considerate drivers who take up two parking spaces by straddling a white line instead of parking between two lines? And let’s not forget the Pushmattees who force their way into a congested intersection effectively blocking movement of traffic in any direction.

My irritation with Christmas driving is eclipsed only by my aversion to Christmas shopping. Shopping of any kind is a major challenge but food shopping in December is a nightmare. Supermarkets turn into dangerous places. People get real ignorant when it’s 6pm on Christmas Eve and there’s only one tin of cranberry sauce left on the shelf. I had to share a six-pack of sorrel shandy with a fellow shopper after we reached for it at the same time and neither one of us wanted to let go. He’s lucky I wasn’t desperate.

Emotions are particularly close to the surface at Christmas time. Forget road rage – trolley tantrums are the new public hissy fits. Try cutting into a checkout queue that snakes along the aisles. You’re likely to be beaten to death with a frozen ham.

Retailers capitalise on our hunger for consumables by opening new stores in time for the Christmas rush. There is something mesmerising about an “Opening Soon” sign. No surprise then that like the rest of the sheep I shuffled through the welcoming doors of the latest mega supermarket in my neighbourhood.

What I love about mega stores – you can literally buy anything from a can of soup to a computer in one spot. What I hate about mega stores – unless you know the layout you can spend two hours trying to find toothpicks.

Eyes pointed upward, we push our trolleys uncertainly down the aisles simultaneously trying to read the signs to find what we came for while being distracted by an enticing array of goods we don’t normally buy. Roasted red pepper pesto with almonds? Oooh, yes please. We end up taking twice as long to complete a simple shopping expedition and spending three times as much as we intended.

Isn’t it about time supermarkets had one-way aisles? Instead of jockeying for position in the pasta section wouldn’t it make more sense for us all to be moving in the same direction? Think of the trolley tantrums that could be avoided.

Let’s say you manage to successfully navigate the shopping and traffic quagmires. The real trial of the season is the family gathering. As much as we love our relatives, they also irritate and infuriate us. Tempers flare easily at Christmas time, particularly when alcohol is involved. Long held grudges have a habit of boiling over with the turkey gravy.

We all have that uncle or cousin who thrives on drama and needs no invitation to dominate a family gathering. This is the family member who turns up drunk for Christmas lunch, tells off-colour jokes, and confesses (loudly) to sleeping with their sibling’s spouse before passing out in the sherry trifle. This season my relatives in England provided the family punch-up and dammit, I wasn’t there to see it.

My mother looks forward to Christmas Day with a malicious glee. It is a golden opportunity for her to criticise my every action; from my cooking to the way I style my hair. It was gratifying therefore to see the genuine delight in her eyes as she opened my Christmas present to her, an ipod. Of course she couldn’t help giving a backhanded compliment: “This is the first time you actually gave me something I asked for” #OyVey

By Boxing Night the food coma is wearing off and most of us have had enough family bonding, thank you very much.  We cling to the promise of New Year’s Eve and the opportunity to press the annual reset button. My New Year’s Eve was far from exciting. I spent it policing my property thanks to my teenage daughter and her friends throwing a rather noisy party at our house. The neighbours who didn’t hate us before now do; and those who did, feel justified in calling the police the next time we throw a party.

Despite the cackahole driving, trolley tantrums, and family drama I had a great Christmas season and look forward to doing it all again this year. By December I will have forgotten how long I spent standing in queues and how frequently I swore at other drivers. All I will remember is the delicious aroma of Christmas food, laughter, and the overwhelming sense of relief as I sat down to Christmas dinner surrounded by those I love most.

Happy New Year everyone.

How was your Christmas season? Do you have a tale of woe/mirth to tell? Please share in the comments below.