All Wrapped Up

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Read on for more geekery … (#litres_trial_promo)

Read on for a bonus Geek Girl story … (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

celebrate [cel-e-brate] verb

1 To observe or commemorate an event

2 To mark with festivities

3 To proclaim or make public

4 To praise widely

5 To perform appropriate rites and ceremonies

ORIGIN from the Latin celebrare– to honour

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My name is Harriet Manners, and I love Christmas.

You can tell I love Christmas because I start celebrating it in the middle of August.

I do it subtly, obviously.

A tinsel brooch here, a life-size plastic reindeer with flashing nose there.

“Harriet,” my stepmother said this year when I wheeled it into the hallway.

“Annabel,” I replied, making my face as angelic as possible. “Did you know that the majority of male reindeers lose their antlers in winter? That means that Rudolph was almost definitely a girl. Don’t you think we should be reminded of this every dayof the year?”

Annabel laughed and put the reindeer back in the garden shed, along with my ‘Jingle Cat – Meowy Christmas’ album and the cinnamon incense sticks I’d hidden behind the radiators.

So I think the answer was no.

In September I constructed a battle of pink versus white sugar mice on the living room carpet, and October was spent sticking thick wads of cotton wool along the edge of every external windowsill so it looked like it had just been snowing.

“Harriet,” Annabel repeated, which means November was spent cleaning it all off again.

Now it’s the middle of December and I’m finally allowed to start marking the occasion, I’m so excited I feel like a shaken can: except instead of soda, Christmas is fizzing straight out.

I have made a neat list of my favourite Christmas animals, and my favourite Christmas foods, and my favourite Christmas songs, and my favourite Christmas lists.

I’ve created a gift plan with associated shopping map, and a detailed Q and A to hand out on Christmas morning so I can accurately deduce how much people really like their presents.

Together, my best friend and I found a traditional mince pie recipe from a Tudor recipe book written in 1543 and cooked them perfectly. (Then threw them all away, because there’s a reason mince pies are now vegetarian.)

I’ve made Christmassy pie charts and PowerPoints, line graphs and crosswords.

I’ve even had a couple of epic festive-themed fights with my parents, because laughing at a letter I wrote to Father Christmas when I was five years old is just not entering into the appropriate spirit of things.

And – most importantly – I’ve decorated.

In fact, thanks to school having just broken up for the Christmas holidays, my house is starting to look like something Santa would visit incognito out of sheer embarrassment.

I have Christmasified everything.

With barely contained happiness, I have glitterised and spangalised, frostificated and shimmerised. I have sparklificated and made up a whole range of festive verbs and written them in my notepad.

But it doesn’t make much of a difference.

Because four days ago, in a dark TV studio in the middle of London, a beautiful model boy held my hand.

I had my First Ever Kiss.

And now it doesn’t matter how much sparkle I spray, or glitter I drop: it feels like I’m decorating from the inside out.

The shiniest thing here this Christmas is me.

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Here are some other important festive Firsts: