Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. The autumnal chill settles into a wintery frost, every shop is playing a catchy Christmas tune for you to dance along to as you purchase presents and public transport becomes a game of Tetris as everyone is smiling and carrying around bags upon bags of gifts and food as they squeeze onto a bus. Nothing beats that little spark of warmth in your heart whenever you see that breathy cloud in the open air next to a Christmas tree. And who doesn’t get giddy when Starbucks‘ Gingerbread Lattes and Costa‘s Black Forest Hot Chocolates are back on the market?
I love Christmas.
However, I love Christmas at Christmas time. As Christmas becomes less and less about festivities, fun and frolicking, commercial culture has stolen Christmas and transformed it into a four-month-long torture campaign at the end of the year. Christmas should stay in December, where it belongs.
As someone who has worked in retail for the past five years, I have had an insight into the way that Christmas has evolved in the commercial industry. Businesses have to order in their seasonal stock before the holiday has arrived, which is logical; you can’t sell Christmas stock at Christmas time if you don’t have the stock when Christmas arrives. However, whereas five years ago Christmas stock was ordered at the end of October, this year I witnessed the heartbreaking moment that was my manager pre-placing orders for chocolate calendars, Christmas trees, baubles, and all kinds of reindeer-related knick-knacks at the end of August. That’s right, August.
Retailers are finding themselves ordering Christmas stock during the summer holidays. When the theme of the month is sunshine, bikinis and beach outings, there are people out there requesting the fluffiest hats and knitted jumpers that money can buy to sell in their shops. It’s worrying. It’s worrying that the spirit of Christmas, which is such a wonderful feeling, is being obliterated by the fact that a third of the year is spent cashing in on that spirit. The warmth and inevitability of smiling like a happy idiot is twisted and made far less special because it’s dragged out from September into October into November and then, finally, December.
There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.
Not only does this ruin the excitement that we all experience at that special time of year, but it interferes with all the other festivities that occur between summer and winter as well.
I doubt it’s an unfamiliar experience. You have a friend whose birthday falls in autumn, maybe even a family member, and you take a trip to Card Factory, or even Clintons if you’re feeling fancy, but you’re met with an array of snowflake displays and dogs wearing Christmas hats. Suddenly the simple task of finding a birthday card becomes a maze (unless you want to wish your friend a Merry Christmas on their birthday). If your birthday falls between September and December, then you can say goodbye to the pre-twenty-first century days of presents wrapped in colourful ‘Happy Birthday’ greetings or chocolate that doesn’t have an imprint of a snowman. You want to spend your birthday vouchers? Better get your heart set on a reindeer knitted jumper with a glowing nose because that’s all that the shops are selling right now.
If you thought birthday annihilation was bad enough, looking for Halloween props will leave you mortified. Want some devil horns or some fake blood? Of course not. October is the time for reindeer antlers and fake snow. Obviously. And I can only weep for our cousins across the pond who have Thanksgiving between the two.
Christmas is wonderful. Everyone loves Christmas (whether they’re religious or otherwise); the smiles, the warmth, the acceptable spontaneous dancing and singing in public without restraint – it’s marvellous. My point is that Christmas propaganda is rapidly engulfing the world.
We’re leaving behind celebrations of the dead and the scary, of another year of life successfully passing, of fireworks and historical turkey-eating. All the other great bits in-between are being forgotten and in the process we find ourselves slowly drowning in bitterness at the prospect of another four-month-long Christmas. I’m not a Scrooge, but I definitely disagree with Wizzard.
I don’t wish it could be Christmas every day.
Edited by Sarah Holmes
Image sources:
InANutshell: http://inanutshell.ca/tag/christmas/
QuickMeme.com: http://www.quickmeme.com/A-Grumpy-Cat-Christmas/?upcoming
MemeCenter: http://www.memecenter.com/search/batman%20robin%20slap%20christmas%20pa