Once again the streets are filled with the resounding chorus of ‘I swear they’re putting these things out earlier every year’. Yes, that’s right, it’s Christmas decoration season, which apparently occurs right after summer now. With Christmas decorations going up even before Halloween is over you have to ask yourself — is all this really necessary?
Does it actually make me feel any more Christmassy or am I just another pawn in the capitalist machine? Will all these shiny baubles fill the Christmas shaped hole in my heart any faster just because they’re delivered to me a good three months before? The answer is probably, no.
The fact is, nobody actually feels really Christmassy until around mid-November at the earliest, unless you’re really into Santa. It’s the same with every other holiday — who wants to eat Easter eggs in February?
Don’t get me wrong, I love holidays. I love Christmas, Easter, and Halloween, but there really is no need for them to fill up approximately half the year between them. The Christmas stock will just be left in a forgotten aisle, known only to the freakishly organised who do their Christmas shopping in August.
The obvious answer is that it’s all just a ploy by the retail sector to get us all to buy more products because they’re available so early. The joke’s on them, my Christmas shopping will still be done two days before.
The one really good thing about the holiday period, however, is the abundance of Christmas adverts. Long gone are the dull, insipid, regular adverts and out come the emotional roller coasters that will make ‘Marley and Me’ look like a walk in the park. These few minutes will have you laughing, crying, and everything in between and churn you out as a battered, emotional wreck. And yet we all love it.
We count down the days until John Lewis release theirs, waiting with bated breath as we try to watch every other major brand try to compete. They’ll never be able to. This is the saving grace of the long, tedious holiday period which leaves everybody sick of Christmas by the time it comes around, inevitably causing all the family arguments that ensue.
Do us a favour, retailers, and leave us alone until at least mid-November before you pull out the big guns; the spirit of Christmas really does not need to be around this long.
