So, Is This Christmas?

It's December, so it must be Christmas.  I know that the municipal decorations have been up in the streets and shopping centres since mid-November, but with the advent of December we've had the appearance of workplace decorations.  In my office at least.  It's at times like this that I'm glad that I spend most of my working day outside of the office.  I've always felt that tinsel in the workplace is inappropriate.  For one thing, work is meant to be unrelentingly dull and soulless, otherwise there'd be no relief in leaving it at the end of the working day. For another, some of us don't like having someone else's conception of the festive season being thrust in their face.  Damn it, when will people respect the fact that I celebrate Winterval, not Christmas?  Besides, it still is only the first of December, still too early for indoor decorations, in my opinion.  As my regular reader(s) will know, I don't put my modest decorations (two Christmas trees) up until quite late in the Christmas run up.  I'm guided in this by my childhood memories of Christmas, when the decorations wouldn't go up before the last but one Sunday before Christmas Day - and my family weren't weird in this respect: back in the seventies it was the accepted practice.

The start of December also brings up the vexed matter of seasonally themed stories on The Sleaze.  Usually I leave any attempt at this until late in the day, which usually results in disappointing traffic - this sort of story has a very limited shelf life.  That said, they do have the potential to yield results on an annual basis, as Christmas rolls back around again.  And again.  But releasing the story too early in December can also be problematic, with readers perceiving you as having 'jumped the gun'.  Then there's the problem of finding a new angle every year: I've had Santa gunned down as he made an anti-globalisation protest, revealed as a white supremacist, outed as gay and championing pagan Yule tide rites amongst other things.  I'm not sure there are many more variations left, which is why, in recent years, he's been largely absent from the seasonal stories.  Anyway, as last year's story was actually pretty popular despite being published on Christmas Eve, this year I've perversely decided to release the 'official' Christmas story today.  It's started slowly, I'll admit, but I'm hoping that it will pick up traffic as Christmas gets closer.  We'll see.