Every year Christmas seems to rear its head earlier and earlier; which is definitely an odd concept considering it’s a single day. Growing up I’ve become used to certain traditions, the Christmas songs can come out on the first of December (and believe me on the 1st the Pogues will be blaring from my laptop), the Christmas decorations go up on the 6th and so forth. It’s also often been said that it’s not Christmas until you’ve seen the Coca Cola advert – which is great, providing the Coca Cola advert comes on at a good time. This year the Christmas adverts seemed to transcend onto my TV screen in reading week; around the 14th of November.
I’m most certainly a person stuck in their ways, and I know what I like, but this forwarding of Christmas or “the Christmas spirit” as I’ve been told it is, is ludicrous. Not only do we still have roughly a month left until the end of the University term from the start of these adverts, the shops were starting to get Christmassy just as they’ve left Halloween. I do enjoy the Christmas spirit, don’t get me wrong, but there’s almost too much of a good thing.
The idea of rallying people together and feeling like everyone gets along is great, as is the cheesy Christmas music (the song ‘It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas’ is allowed to come a little bit earlier), but it’s barely into December and I’m already starting to seem all christmassed out.
And then we have the decorations, every year there’s some house nearby that decided the 1st of November is an appropriate time to put up your decorations et al. It just seems silly. I guess it’s something quintessentially British but its tradition, and tradition at times isn’t particularly to be broken.
It may seem quite Grinch like in a way but for some reason, it genuinely annoys me that Christmas seems to come earlier each year, however as soon as it touches December I’m all happy for whoever to blast out Christmas songs, put up their tinsel, but before then, keep it away.
Matt Jackson