Christmas Is Coming

So, it’s little more than a month until Christmas, and the shops are heaving with shoppers, filling their trolleys as if they were expecting a siege. The supermarkets have filled every extra bit of floor-space with stacks of mince pieces, Christmas cakes, crackers, wrapping paper and all the paraphinalia of the Christmas season. All this seems to start earlier and earlier each year. We get over Guy Fawkes Night and Hallow’een (which never used to be such a ‘Big Thing’ in this country until only a few years ago.) and suddenly all the Christmas tat seems to appear all over the place. Generally the stuff that we couldn’t possibly do without, such as tinsel, party hats, musical Christmas trees and glitter.  What do people do with all this stuff? Their homes must resemble some sort of warehouse as they stock up with all these items. Do they gorge themselves on mincepies, and are these mincepies going to be even fresh and edible for the actual Christmas holiday season? There can, surely be only so many mince pies you can eat at one time, and I for one would be sick to death of too many, even though I do actually rather like mincepies.

Our year has been broken up into sections, to maintain as much profit for shop-keepers, eager to attract the gullible shopper. These seasons revolve around the standard holidays, Easter, Christmas and New Year, but then we have the addition of special days, such as Father’s Day, Mother’s Day (actually Mothering Sunday in Britain. It seems to be the U.S.A. which renamed it and I believe they have it on a different day to us in Britain.) Valentine’s Day, Hallowee’n and so on. As soon as one day has passed, the stock from that day is removed and replaced by the next. No doubt, as soon as Christmas and the New Year is over, the shops will be filled with pink hearts, fluffy cherubs with bow and arrows and Valentine’s cards. It makes me laugh that after Hallowee’n some of the supermarkets were selling pumpkins off half-price or less. I don’t suppose pumpkins have a very long shelf-life so it was better to sell this stock at a bargain price than have to throw it all into a skip.