Countdown to Christmas and Great Expectations

Sooner or later, probably sooner, somebody is going to produce (not ‘invent’, I’m just about to do that) the two month advent calendar.  This is not a much needed innovation that would allow you to open a window every day in January to be greeted by a cheering scene or a piece of chocolate as you count your way through what some consider the Most Miserable Month and others, actually wholly in that group, also call Dry January, rather it is an advent calendar that starts not on 1 December but on 1 November and would be a cynical exploitation of the phenomenon of Christmas seemingly starting earlier every year.

Why anyone would have a problem with Christmas, traditionally the season of goodwill, lasting longer is anyone’s guess, but there’s no pleasing some people, just ask anyone who voted ‘Leave’, they won and they are all still fuming.  Maybe they are just angry people generally, and an excellent illustration of the maxim ‘don’t vote angry’.

Just as the seasons are actually marked by phases of the moon, flowers flowering and animals wandering, so mankind has introduced artificial markers of seasonal change.  Hence, the end of Christmas is traditionally marked by Christmas chocolate going on sale at half price, and Easter Eggs appearing next to the discounted confectionary at full price.  Christmas Eve is traditionally the last time for eleven months that you will see perfume adverts in heavy rotation, Boxing Day is when you see adverts for holidays replace them.  January sees the launch of part works, where you can spend £4,000 purchasing many magazines that will allow you to build your own traction engine, free flywheel with part one.  And so on.

The first sign of impending Yule is usually an innocuous one, it will be an ‘A’ board outside a pub, restaurant and possibly even a roadside café that bookings are now being taken for Christmas.  Actually I am rather attracted to a roadside café, a proper one, meaning a caravan in a layby with some mismatched patio furniture next to it and a sign next to a length of hedge that instructs that the concealing vegetation is ‘for customers’ use only’ doing Christmas functions, surely such a venue would be an ideal place for truckers or sales reps to have their Christmas party?

This is followed by other signs, such as the Halloween decorations on sale in the seasonal aisle of the supermarket being replaced by gift boxes of chocolate and booze, particularly the sort of booze that you only buy at Christmas, and then only as a gift. Then before you know it, the first bit of tinsel has appeared in a shop window, it’s December and people start hoarding cheese in expectation of the big day.

Our family ritual around the start of December is to do the draw for the secret Santa.  A modest spending limit results in people having to exercise their imaginations although now that the children are growing up, we can thank God, just panic and buy booze for them.

The long run up to Christmas can put pressure on people.  Are you enjoying yourself as much as other people?  Are you enjoying yourself as much as you think you should be doing?  Are you enjoying yourself too much, oh God the guilt the guilt.  It’s like opening up the gift of a new iPhone and being confronted with a picture of the person who made it as the lock screen.  Your first reaction is not ‘My God that kid looks miserable’ it’s ‘Somebody has been fucking with my iPhone!’ before the shame kicks in.

If you are an adult you start drinking Christmas morning because you realise you are never going to be able to recapture the sheer joy unwrapping cheap plastic crap when you were nine years old brought.

Christmas has been idealised since Dickens.  Obtaining somebody else’s idea of a perfect Christmas is an unreasonable expectation, especially since they moved the Doctor Who special to New Year’s Day, so maybe the thing to do is to realise you had your perfect Christmas when you were a kid, and try to make Christmas better, if not perfect, for others.