December is always the busiest month for my consulting business. Because I have a teaching job as well, I have marking and paperwork to do to wrap up the teaching year, at the same time as planning for next year's classes.

And because I am lucky enough to have a big January holiday (that's the standard thing in Australia), I need to get most of January's work done in December.

So I find the end of the work year, pre-summer holiday timing of Christmas and its festivities very inconvenient.

I don't have any religious interest in Christmas, nor any other interest in Christmas really, but it is part of community and family life sufficiently that I am involved in celebrating it anyway.

Australian Christians all run around so busily pre-Christmas that we call it the silly season.

I feel like I am balancing busy and festivity until virtually Christmas Day itself, when busy is forced out by virtue of the reality that family festive commitments are upon me and aided by the fact that the endless busyness means the work is done for the year.

As I write this, I am up to my ears in work. I find myself strangely looking forward to Christmas Day and that must be at least partly due to the rest it gives me.

Perhaps that's not quite what all the fuss is supposed to be about, but maybe it doesn't matter why families spend Christmas Day together. Maybe what matters is that they actually take the time to stop the world for a day and just be together.