I’m pretty sure that everyone has lost their mind.

It is not their fault – tis the season, after all.

I’m not sure when it happened, but for me, Christmas has gone from a fun “hurrah for family, friends and fabulous gifts” to “when will it end”.

Seriously.

Madonna has cancelled Christmas in her household.

I’m all for it. It drives people insane.

Don’t believe me? Try and get a park at the Plaza. Go on, try it, I dare you.

If you’re not brave enough to try and actually park, just skulk around the car park and watch the meltdowns.

People have lost their minds.

I was undertaken – undertaken – turning out of a section of car parks the other day. Seriously.

The woman who did it had a screaming kid in the back, saw the park I was headed for (clearly it was mine; I was ahead of her and had the indicator on, which I am pretty sure is the universal sign for MINE!) and decided she would just go for it.

Apparently she didn’t see the big red car I drive, because she has spent the past week only seeing red.

But it is not just out on the roads.

My family have lost their minds as well.

I think it happened around December 1 when everyone was planning where we would spend Christmas this year.

Usually it is not that big a problem.

But this year, there is a custody battle going on between Alex’s two families for his younger sister, who has decided to spend Christmas and her birthday (Boxing Day) in Australia with her new beau.

She has lived OS for the past decade or so and has only made it home a handful of times, so when she is in the vicinity, everyone wants some face time.

Compacting Bel’s arrival is the latest addition to the Jones clan, his younger brother’s son, Connor.

He is just fresh out of the oven (but I’ve been reliably informed he can hold his own head up now, so the ickiness factor has gone down. And as babies go, I guess I have a soft spot for him) but it is his first Christmas and the first grandchild, so everyone wants some face time with him too.

So over two days, everyone wants to see everyone else, including two new people who haven’t really been in the mix before, but because there are so many people to see and everyone has a gazillion plans, there will be no one gathering of the extended Jones clan this year, so everyone is trying to co-ordinate everyone else’s movements so we all get to see one another at some point, but no-one can lock in a time until they have heard from everyone else and so the circle of confusion continues.

And it doesn’t help that I’m taking half of the messages and Alex is getting the other half, but he has a two-second memory and can’t remember what he has committed to, so by the time his mums give up and call me, I manage to confuse all of us.

And I haven’t even gotten to my immediate family yet.

Alex’s parents are the sane ones.

I love my mum and dad, but seriously, they are already crazy, so throw in Christmas and it is a crazy free-for-all in the Remeikis household.

We have Christmas on Christmas Eve, because my Oma and dad are Lithuanian and hey, that is the way it has always been done.

Our celebration involves 13 dishes, (NO RED MEAT!! I had to capitalise that because that is pretty much how my Oma says it each and every year. Honestly, once she picked out all the pink bits in a piece of fish, because they were too close to being red), breaking bread and lots of red wine.

When I was little, those 13 dishes meant herrings (gag) and other (gag) Lithuanian delicacies (gag, gag) but now my mum and I have managed to wrestle control and 12 out of the 13 dishes are actually edible. (Oma refused to give up the herrings.)

But you try cooking 12 dishes in one day, with 50 trillion people (OK, five, but we are very loud) poking their head in every two seconds to see how you are going, before getting dressed up enough to suit your hilarious, but picky and crazy grandmother who drinks too much brandy and wants to inspect every dish to make sure it has no red meat in it twice, because she has dementia and forgets that she has already checked the dishes) and still retain some saneness at the end of the evening.

That is not even taking into account that while we may all start the meal all lovey dovey with each other, the copious amounts of alcohol which is part of the celebration soon loosen everyone’s tongues and a whole year’s worth of pent-up emotions spill out, with my dad laughing outrageously and stirring the pot as much as he can, before we all burst into tears and hug and tell each other repeatedly how much we love one another.

Seriously – the first year Alex spent Christmas Eve with us, he just sat like a stunned mullet, not quite sure what to do.

Five years on and he is still not sure what to do.

So by the time Christmas day rolls round and we’re nursing hangovers the size of Lithuania, I am well and truly over Christmas.

Bring on 2008!