It seems like an odd question. Even a kindy kid could answer it — the birth of Jesus. But what does it truly mean to you?
When I was small, Christmas meant two things: a gift with my name on it, and a table so full the plates had to overlap. When I grew older, it meant the holidays — the long exhale at the end of a hard year.
Christmas has always carried joy and peace with it. Even in wartime, there have been Christmas Days when the fighting simply stopped — soldiers laying down their weapons for a few hours because of what day it was. I have never stopped finding that extraordinary. For the rest of us, it is the one time of year we are allowed to set down the weight we've been carrying since January, and simply be loved by the people around us. And because it falls at the very end of the year, it is also a time to reflect — to pick up the threads we've let slip, and finally ring the people we've been meaning to ring.

And this year, for me?

This year, Christmas is a dream that has finally stood up on its own two feet. Tomorrow, Christmas Wonder opens its doors.
So much of what's in this shop was made by hand. A carver, a weaver, a painter, a family in a village a very long way from Australia. When you hold one of those pieces, you are holding hours of somebody's work — their patience, their tradition, the thing their grandmother taught them. And every other piece here I have chosen myself, because it came from somewhere real and someone’s dedication.
That is what I have wanted to share: their happiness, carried all the way here to us. And because we buy fairly, the joy travels back the other way too. A fair price is not charity — it is dignity.
Some of our profits will go to Ambulance Wish Queensland. I chose them because they bring joy and love into the very last part of a person's journey — the wish to see the ocean one more time, to sit in a favourite place, to be somewhere that means something. Life is precious at every stage, right to the end. And the memory they create doesn't finish with the patient; it stays with the family, and they carry it for the rest of their lives.
And for you?

I hope that when you unwrap something from this shop, or hang it on your tree, it will remind you that we are all connected in love and joy. And that the small thing you are holding travelled a very long way to reach your family.
That, to me, is the wonder in Christmas Wonder.
Thank you for being here on day one.

Christmas wanderer