Winterval Wonderland

So, with November - and Autumn - finally drawing to a close, we have December and the official onset of Winter to look forward to tomorrow.  More importantly, it marks the point at which one can put up Christmas decorations without causing offence.  Not that I will, of course.  For one thing, here at Sleaze Towers we don't actually celebrate Christmas - we prefer Winterval and, in order to keep Winterval special, we like to leave putting up the decorations until only a couple of weeks before the big day itself.  Then, I'll be putting up my official Winterval decorations which, to the untrained eye, look somewhat like artificial Christmas trees.  I'm still mulling over whether or not to have external decorations this year.  I know that every year I end up not doing this, but you never know, this time it could be different.  I mean, so far this year I haven't seen much in the way of garish external Christmas decorations adorning houses.  Usually these start appearing as soon as the clocks go back.  Perhaps it's the recession.  Or maybe this year the perpetrators have decided to show some restraint and re waiting for the beginning of December.

Which isn't to say that I haven't seen any external decorations, it's just that those I've noticed have mainly been on businesses.  Some weeks ago a local Chinese restaurant started sporting a herd of illuminated reindeer and the other day I noticed that one of the out-of-town garden centres was lit up like Las Vegas with various neon Santas, sprigs of holly, snowflakes and the like.  Getting back to Winterval, celebrating this multi-denominational, all-encompassing secular celebration of midwinter has distitinct advantages - it makes avoiding office Christmas parties easy as you can just say that it goes against your Winterval beliefs.  In this age of equality and tolerance, nobody can object to such an excuse.  Alternatively, being multi-denominational means that we Winterval worshippers have the perfect excuse to attend seasonal parties and celebrations thrown by every faith at this time of year if we so wish.  Definitely a win-win situation.  So, be merry, as we're about to enter the season of Winterval!