Now It Can Begin
December 1st. It should be the official start to Christmas!
Every year the pre-festive activities start to get earlier and earlier. Restaurants advertise their Christmas menus in July. Shops start selling decorations in September. Town’s lights are switched on at the beginning of November. This year, some supermarkets had mince pies for sale in September whose “best before” date didn’t even last to November! I actually saw a house with decorations up two weeks ago. As my other half so bluntly put it, the only reason decorations should be up this early is if a kid has a terminal illness and the chances of them making it to the 25th are incredibly slim!
24 days before Christmas is plenty of time to get things done, to buy and wrap your presents, to write and send your cards so why do we have to inflict it upon ourselves at the earliest opportunity? The problem is that we live in a consumer-driven society, and even though there’s supposed to be a recession on, people throw themselves into present-buying and trying to out-do one another on the lights outside their house without a care about how much it actually costs!
I went looking to put some background music on yesterday while I pottered around the house and flicked on the music channels on my TV. Apart from the dance channels, every other channel had a Christmas countdown of some kind! The 50 Best Christmas Songs Ever. The Worst Xmas Songs Ever. 20 Forgotten Christmas Songs. How about “100 Songs Played in December That Have Got Feck-all To Do With Christmas”?
Supermarkets don’t waste any time putting their Christmas songs on either. Walking from shop to shop at this time of year inflicts a Jive Bunny-esque Christmas Medley into your ears. How the staff in these shops don’t manage to slit their wrists is beyond me!
By the time it actually gets anywhere near Christmas I am sick and tired of hearing Band Aid, Shakin Stevens and bloody Noddy Holder on the radio. “Iiiitttttssss Chriiiiiiiiiiistmas!” No it’s bloody not, there’s still 3 sodding weeks to go. Now piss off and leave me be!
