I’m not a Scrooge: I love Christmas. I shouldn’t have to do this, as we have only just had Bonfire Night, but once again, the ‘run-up’ to Christmas has been brought forward, diluting the ‘festive season’ and making Christmas and its associated paraphernalia stick in the craw like a poison barb, killing any feeling of goodwill and excitement long before you’ve stuck your turkey in the oven. In order to salvage some sense of wonder, I am banning any mention of Christmas, any sale of Christmas items, any mocked up cheesy wintry scenes until December 1st, every year forthwith.
It’s become a running joke that gets no laughs: who can spot the first Christmas display in a supermarket? I think I may have won this year: on my return from summer holiday at the end of August I went to the garden centre to get some compost. I lead an exciting life, and gardening is to me what Mitsubishis and techno is to others. Anyway, at the garden centre – and keep in mind the sun was shining, I was wearing shorts and, I think, lazily licking a Fab – Santa had clearly come very early. A whole section of the store was covered in fake snow, with thousands of Christmas lights, baubles, tinsel, nodding reindeer and candy canes being offered for sale. The insanity of this was evident even to the staff. When I asked what the rush was the lad working there shock his head in shame. “The management said to beat the rush.” Beat the rush? What rush? When was the last time you heard anyone fretting about Christmas in August? And why would they have to rush anyway? It’s not as though anybody is going to sell out of anything – there are mountains of Christmas things everywhere. A rush is not going to happen.
I had a phone call in September asking me if I had prepared my ‘Christmas list’ yet, as if I were a simpleton who couldn’t manage my own list, and as if I even needed a Christmas list in the fist place. When I asked the girl if calling people and trying to instil some sense of fake urgency in the ‘run-up’ to Christmas wasn’t a little bit pathetic in September, she got defensive. “A lot of people, we’ve found, like to get all their Christmas shopping done early, so they can relax nearer the time.” Really? A lot of people, I’ve found, would like you to fuck off and die.
It’s the sheer relentless, fake glee of it all that grates. They turned on the Christmas lights in the West End of London this year on November 3rd. I work in the West End and happened upon this ‘festive celebrity occasion’ starring Jim Carrey and Bob Hoskins. You’d have thought it was a cold, snowy night the way people were dressed. It wasn’t. It was very mild, but that didn’t stop the crowd from wearing scarves and hats and gloves, trying to will the event into some clichéd idea of Christmas. All this took place before a single firework display. By the end of November the novelty has worn off. The excitement has died away. Instead of concentrating all the excitement into a short period in the real run-up to Christmas everything is diluted in a long, drawn-out tedious hammering home of every festive cliché.
TV Christmas adverts now start around the beginning of October. “Holidays are coming, holidays are coming . . .” Well, no, actually they aren’t fucking coming for most of us for another ten weeks. Stupid people throw fake snowballs and pull crackers and everything looks like Wham’s Last Christmas video until all you want to do is leave. Turn off the TV, avoid any shops, just leave. Being force-fed so much turkey makes us all sick.
Why can’t it all start on December 1st? That seems fair. You put up your advent calendar; shops put out their stock (by the way, how stale is some of that Christmas fare sold in August going to be four months later?), Christmas work parties start. The crest of the wave picks up and a genuine sense of excitement builds. Children must think Christmas is some interminable time of year punctuated by just another day. Let’s make it special again. Let’s ban any mention of Christmas before 1 December. For the kids.
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