Christmas Watch 2013

It's that time of year again, when we start our annual 'Christmas Watch', to monitor seasonal creep.  I thought this year was going well, without too much yuletide merchandise infiltrating Autumn.  Indeed, apart from the appearance of the usual mince pies and Christmas puddings on supermarket shelves, I really thought that we'd make it past Guy Fawkes night before we saw any more overt and ostentatious manifestations of Christmas.  But then last week, before even Halloween, I saw my first Christmas tree.  Fully decorated.  Lights, the lot.  And it wasn't just tucked away in some obscure corner shop or greasy spoon.  Oh no, there it was, bold as brass, sitting in the window of 'Bright House', slap bang in the middle of Crapchester's main shopping centre.  Now, bearing in mind that the main business of 'Bright House' is to extend credit to the low paid in order to buy household goods, it is entirely possible, as my brother has pointed out, that the tree had been repossessed by them after a 'customer' had failed to keep up the payments.

Whatever the reasons for the Christmas tree's appearance in the window of 'Bright House', it seems to have opened the floodgates, with other retailers apparently emboldened by its appearance to start sticking their own seasonal tat into ever more prominent positions.  That Danish shop, which stocks all manner of cheap stuff, now has one of its main window displays full of Christmas decorations, for instance.  I fear that it is only a matter of time before all the Christmas crap bursts out of the special 'seasonal goods' enclaves it is currently confined to in the main supermarkets, and takes over the stores completely.  But it isn't just the High Street which has seen the stealthy arrival of Christmas.  Only the other night I saw the first major Christmas TV commercial of the year, with Marks and Spencer conflating the Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland into an excuse for some girl to pose in her underwear.  Nice to know that they haven't lost sight of what Christmas is all about: titillation.  Even more ominous, this evening I had my first sighting of Cliff Richard plugging his Christmas single.  On the one hand, I quite admire him for still putting the things out at the age of seventy three, but on the other I can't help but feel that if even Sir Cliff is debuting his seasonal offering this early, then all; is lost.  Nevertheless, I know I seem to say this every year, but really, can't we have a moratorium on Christmas appearing before the beginning of December?  Surely having a single month devoted to it is enough?