If you love Christmas , you should come and work in retail.

I like Christmas but over the last few years my enthusiasm for the season has dipped somewhat. I have been excitedly enthused about the giving season for far longer than it was cool to and I didn't mind sharing it at all. I remember as a child the excitement of going to Dublin and seeing the lights turned on and looking at the magnificent display that was Arnotts Christmas window. It's only natural that some of that sense of wonder will leave you when Santa gets outted and your parents confess to being the real present buyers but I was still getting ridiculously excited well into my twenties. It was my sister who insisted my Mum keep filling our stockings but I certainly didn't protest. 

I loved being at home over Christmas and seeing the tree all lit up and the presents piled beneath it as my Mother grumbled that we had gotten carried away this year and we should hide some of them upstairs. I loved just having the family gathered together,with our own separate lives, it's rare to get everyone together at any other time of year. I loved the hustle and bustle of Christmas and shopping for other people and listening to old fashioned Christmas songs like here comes Santa Claus. Picture me like a slightly less irritating Buddy the elf from Elf and tone it down a few notches and you'll have me at Christmas.

As my sisters have gone on to have their own kids, Christmas has gotten even better because you get to take on their excitement and relive the magic of Christmas all over again.

I remember one year back when I worked in a call centre and you could book days off for Christmas without getting laughed at, and I thought my holidays had not been approved so I would only end up getting  two or three days together and I actually rang my parents in tears ( admittedly not my proudest moment) before pulling it together and realising it wasn't that bad. 

Fast forward a few years and here I am in Book Mecca working my third Christmas in a row and I am just starting to remember how stressful it gets particularly when you're in the eye of the storm other wise known as the Children's section. Last year I got home Christmas eve sometime after seven and I was back in Waterford the afternoon of Stephen's day because there was a storm and I had work the following day and I think about the fuss I made while getting more holidays than that back in the call centre and I laugh at the irony.

This is when I take some time to be glad that I manage stress well. Oh no wait, I mean I handle stress badly, very badly indeed.

Here are the things that make it hard to cope for someone working in a very busy place at the most important shopping days of the year. The crowds, they will be endless and everywhere. It might take you five minutes to respond to a bell (rung when a customer or staff member needs assistance at customer service desk or the front till) because it takes you that long to get to the other side of the shop.

The trying to get in everything you might need for Christmas into the store by mostly guessing what people will be looking for and hoping you don't run out of this years big book whatever that might be.

The queries, the endless non stop queries, many straightforward but then plenty of the obscure my grandchild is 6 but has the reading level of your average 14 year old, what would you recommend. And a lot of these will come to you when you have your hands so full of books you can't even see who is talking or when you are under pressure but trying not to seem bothered so they don't think you rude or unhelpful. It can be exhausting trying to juggle it all while wondering if you have time for a nervous breakdown or if you should just wait and have it Christmas day so it doesn't get in the way of everything else. 

I will go home tired and feverish wishing Christmas away and waking up from ridiculous stress dreams where I forgot to order any Horrid Henry books and now its all anyone wants. 

And that is Christmas in retail, in all it's glory with Santa hats and Christmas songs and Oh God I hope we sell enough but not so much that we run out of the books that people really want and can't get them in on time. I'd like this to be my last run at this stress fest and I can go back to being the sort of person who stays away from town on Christmas eve but then again I probably said the same thing last year so who knows there might be more of these shenanigans for me yet.