Christmas isn’t right after Bonfire Night!
CAN we please, all of us, start Christmas later this year than when some of us would usually start it?
Now, please, do not see me as a Scrooge. I really enjoy and look forward to Christmas every year. I will forever be in agreement with Andy Williams – it is certainly the most wonderful time of the year.
Now, the shops will - with great haste and fanfare - remind us that Christmas is “just around the corner”.
As soon as Hallowe’en and Bonfire Night are out of the way it just becomes overwhelming and the shops are so aggressive and vulgar with their Christmas advertising. They overlook an important and most poignant part of our nation’s year – Remembrance.
No doubt, as I walk along the Highcross shopping centre on, say, November 15, I will be serenaded by the magic sounds of Bing Crosby and sleigh bells playing over the PA system. “Oh goodie”, I will think and a feeling of warmth will overcome me knowing that Christmas day is just...40 days away.
It is not just the shops. I have read that the city centre’s Christmas lights are to be illuminated for the first time on November 22. Goodness knows on which autumn night London will switch on theirs.
There was a television channel last year that started showing Christmas films (at least two a day) as soon as the last trick or treater had finished their spooky night’s work.
It is not just the commercial world that is at fault. There were some houses last year near me that had their Christmas lights up as soon as the last firework went off.
Restaurants and tourist attractions, regardless of what demand you may have, please refrain from giving us the unedifying sight of tinsel, crackers and holly just as we are remembering our fallen heroes.
Are we going to get to the point where a Christmas advert is broadcast during a Lord’s test match?
For me, I think a good day to start the season of goodwill at the earliest is Advent Sunday (this year it falls on the December 1). I am not preaching religion here, but I think it is a tasteful and dignified day to start the Christmas season.
I reiterate, I am not a Scrooge, Grinch or killjoy. I just think it is better to have a great Christmas (and new year) in the space of four-anda-half weeks, instead of starting on November 6 and burning out on Christmas with a week to go until the big day. For some people I know this has been the case in years past.
Andrew Devine, Mountsorrel