Wednesday 5 December 2012

No, it's Not Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas


   Firstly, a disclaimer: I am very much not a Scrooge. I LOVE Christmas! I'm beginning to get excited about it and very much looking forward to heading home to the countryside for a proper break.

However.

Surely I'm not the only one who thinks it is, at best, ridiculous, that some shops have been playing Christmas music already for two weeks?

I'm already tired of hearing the canned jingles of the same three Christmas songs repeated again and again, and am now convinced that such torture could turn Father Christmas himself into a Grinch.
I don't know how Sales Assistants cope.

Yes, I'm all for a bit of festive merriment, but c'mon: it's the frikkin' 5TH DECEMBER! We still have 20 whole days to go before we actually celebrate this. I don't want Christmas songs playing in every shop I walk into between now and then!

To be fair, I'm sick of Mariah's 'All I want for Christmas....' before we're five seconds in (the irony of playing this in a shop selling perfume, diamonds, jewellery and all the other things she wants is apparently lost on the shop management).
  I don't want to hear Chris Ree's 'Driving Home for Christmas' (which, by the way, I love) on the 5th December! The only people 'driving home for Christmas' today are students.
Or, people who are driving from here to Australia for Christmas. But other than them, my argument still stands.

I know it's a much bemoaned fact but playing Christmas songs - more than that, all the frivolities of Christmas, from the moment we hit December - are nothing short of ridiculous. I've been putting off getting the Christmas tree - if you get it on December 1st, surely it's well and truly dead by the time we're meant to take it down on January 6th? And a withering, brown Christmas tree can arguably be a metaphor for all the festivities: exciting, but very temporary and with insufficient substance to last the 2 months festive season.

Some people make such a big deal about it from mid-November that by the time the 25th rolls around we're even a little bored of Christmas. No wonder the moment Boxing Day is over people are hurrying to get the decorations packed away.

At times like this, when crazy Christmas shoppers on Oxford Street tempt me to chuck my shopping at the nearest stranger, yelling 'I GIVE UP!', I can be truly thankful that there is more to it to this.

Without, y'know, the whole True Meaning of Christmas thing, the whole fiasco just seems like a big excuse to spend money that we don't have on things we don't want, in the name of 'Family' and Bing Crosby ballads and 'feeling Christmassy'. Thank God that even if the turkey's frozen in the middle and your Amazon products don't arrive in time, there is ACTUALLY a reason for joy, love and all those other smushy words people use during the festive season.

When you reflect on the notion that this all came from God choosing to come to earth Himself, to save us from pain, sorrow, but primarily from ourselves and our mess, whether there's a Kindle for me under the tree isn't all that important. The beautiful permanence of this sharply contrasts with the paper hats which will be crumpled by the end of dinner and the tree which will sit outside sadly withering away.




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