28 September 2017

It’s Still September, For Heaven’s Sake!

Christmas is three months away.

By Lynda Goetz

Last Monday was 25^th September, the birthday of one of my nieces, and also three months before 25^th December, Christmas Day. A few days earlier I was shopping and thought I should get a card and some wrapping paper for the small gift I had purchased. I was horrified to discover that I probably had more choice of Christmas wrapping paper on offer than birthday paper. It is September. The leaves are still on the trees and have barely started to change colour; there are still flowers in bloom in the garden; I for one have not yet even bought my autumn bulbs, let alone planted them; we are over a month away from Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night. Why on earth are the supermarkets and garden centres already full of Christmas stuff?

I know this is not a new thing. Every year as soon as summer holidays are over and children are back at school the shops start bringing out the Christmas cards, the baubles and the boxes of biscuits. But why? Do people really start squirreling away tins of Christmas sweets and rolls of wrapping paper the minute the buckets and spades and swimsuits have been consigned to the back of cupboards? Do one’s thoughts really turn to Christmas before the apples are off the trees, and while the grass still needs cutting and the sea is warmer than it was in May? What on earth has happened to our sense of the seasons? Christmas and Boxing Day are two days of the year. Two days out of 365. There is still 25% of the year to go before we reach this major festival in our calendar. Surely we really don’t want to spend the next three months planning for those two days of consumerist madness and major gluttony?

Well, perhaps we do, since presumably the retailers would not take up floor space if there was no profit in it for them. Perhaps making us think about it this early causes us to overbuy, to overspend, to end up buying too many things. Perhaps it is simply part of the whole system on which our modern economy depends. Maybe I should stop being so curmudgeonly and accept that Christmas effectively starts in September. Personally, I will continue to refuse to countenance any Christmas purchases until late November at the earliest. I will continue to ignore all blandishments to buy gift boxes of hand cream, shower gel and body moisturiser or candles, scent diffusers and pot pourri. That I am able to do so is possibly because I bought all my wrapping paper, cards and even some of those gift boxes (if not biscuits and chocolates) back in January during the sales. After all, who on earth wants Christmas stuff in January? It’s all over by then – at least until the following December. Now, shall I just throw a pack of Hot Cross Buns into the trolley whilst I am here?