Is it Christmas dinner time again?
WE’RE well into spring. We’ve had some mild, sunny days and the early evenings are lighter for longer.
So what better time to start seriously thinking about where to go for Christmas lunch?
Actually, I can think of a much better time. Midnight on December 24. However, according to a deluge of unsolicited emails I’ve received recently from hotels and restaurants, I should look at their “sumptuous” Christmas menus and consider how many lunch guests to pay a deposit for.
Yikes! It’s not even Easter and they want me to start spending money on Christmas! But that’s our world today. We are constantly cajoled, pushed, persuaded ... blackmailed even ... into spending money on events and “special days” from January to December.
You may remember my article about the naked greed of supermarkets which, from the moment they’ve sold the last garden table, chairs and parasol set on August Bank Holiday Monday, cover all bases in their effort to prise every last coin out of your hands. Overnight, shelves groan under the weight of Halloween tat.
Posters go up advertising November 5 fireworks for sale ... to adults only.
And, as the staff hang tinsel and plastic Santas on the remaining shelf space, the same 25 Christmas songs we hear every year start playing in the background.
And all this happens, not as Johnny Mathis tells us “because a child is born” but because the owners of supermarkets and the manufacturers and importers, whose goods we buy, want to take our cash from us. It’s as simple as that. So, when an ad pops up on my laptop, asking “Have you thought about spending Christmas and new year with us at the No Sea View Hotel and ‘Spar’ (the shop is open Christmas morning for those lastminute gifts like a packet of cooked ham and a can of WD40)”, I shout at the screen in my best Noddy Holder voice…
“No! Because it’s March. NOT Chriiiisss…mas!”