"I should admit, at the outset of this piece, that, as an adult, I have always been largely agnostic to the Christmas spirit – that intangible embodiment of a season that, to this mind, has always been something to get through, after which the holiday (and the Boxing Day test match) begins, and not in and of itself the year’s crowning jewel.  But this year has been unlike any of those that have heralded my previous 35 Christmases: Covid-19, obviously, and then, five or so days into the lockdown it spawned, the arrival of our first child, a daughter. So when the opportunity to write this piece arrived in my inbox, it felt like a rare opportunity for the interests of an eight-month-old and her stay-at-home dad to combine. She would, for the first time in her little life, meet Santa, on duty at Auckland’s Sylvia Park Shopping Centre; I would emerge, momentarily, from my journalistic sabbatical to dip my toes into The Spinoff’s festive waters."