Christmas is a special time for a lot of us, and the rituals, sights, smells and sounds that go along with it can be very effective at stirring up childhood memories of Christmases past and generating a nostalgic, sentimental glow. But if shops start hanging tinsel in October it doesn’t take long for the spell to be broken. Seriously: when you hear Wizzard’s ‘I Wish it Could be Christmas Everyday’, does it remind you of sipping mulled wine next to a roaring fire or does it remind you of November in Woolworths?
I was in my local Tesco a couple of years ago and they were selling Christmas food IN SEPTEMBER. That’s too early. Mid-September and they had shelves of stollen, Christmas pud and mince pies. Nobody is that organised that they buy food three and a half months in advance. Anyone who is that organised makes their own food. Just out of curiosity I pulled a pack of mince pies off the shelf to check the ‘best before’ date and I swear to you it was November 10th. What sort of numpty buys mince pies that go off in November? And don’t tell me that some people might just want to eat mince pies in September. You only eat mince pies at Christmas, and most of us don’t even like them then. I guess the logic is, they’re generally so foul you can’t tell if they’ve gone off or not. Personally, I think you may as well wipe your arse on some digestive biscuits and hand them round as shove a mince pie under my nose, regardless where we are relative to its ‘best before’ date.
What nearly made my wife and I weep genuine tears of actual sadness was the fact that they were also selling single slices of Christmas cake. Imagine that. Not two slices, maybe for a couple who couldn’t be bothered to make a whole cake. No. One slice. That’s a slice for you and no slice for your no pals. It’s important, now and again, to spare a thought for those less fortunate than us who might be spending Christmas alone, but I don’t need such a stark reminder as single slices of Christmas cake on sale in September. That means that, with over three months to go, the bloke in question is already resigned to the fact that he’ll be on his tod this festive season. He’s already got it all planned out. ‘I’ll have a Bernard Matthews Turkey Drummer, followed by a single slice of Christmas cake. Then I’ll open the card I sent to myself. After which I’ll stand on one end of a cracker and pull the other, get drunk, have a wank under the mistletoe and pass out. Happy holidays!’
As depressing a notion as that is, is it any more depressing than the thought of somebody buying mince pies that go off in November? Because, for me, that conjures up images of people who, for some reason, have had to have Christmas early this year. Nobody has an early Christmas for a happy reason. It’s more likely to be a sad reason like, ‘Grandad’s not going to make it to December. We’re having Christmas in November this year and we’re going to enjoy it! We’ll tell him it’s December. He’s so far gone he won’t know the difference.’ Either that or, ‘We have Christmas in October so that Uncle Brendan can spend it with us. He generally goes back to prison shortly after that. It’s not really his fault. He does try to stay out of trouble, but he tends to fall off the wagon at Halloween.’
(Do you see what I did there? That was called reincorporation. It’s a classic comedy trick. You probably thought it was strange that I should even have mentioned Halloween in an essay about Christmas, initially. You probably thought I was just padding out my piece with a bit of Halloween filler. But I wasn’t. All the while I was building to that Uncle Brendan callback. Pretty clever, huh?)
So, what am I trying to say here? I guess the point I’m making is that shitty Scalextric knock-offs and bikes with two right pedals didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for Christmas, but greedy retailers who try to get me into a premature Christmas mood do. I propose a moratorium on all kinds of Christmas marketing pre mid-November. The Advertising Standards Authority should introduce a rule saying sleigh bells may not feature in adverts until the first week of December. And while we’re at it, let’s introduce a law banning the sale or display of tinsel in shops until December 15th. Failing that, I think Wizzard should get back in the studio and record a song called ‘It Should Only Feel Like Christmas One Month a Year’.
JENNY COLGAN
I’ve always been enthralled by Christmas. The English ideal, at any rate (where I come from in Scotland, Hogmanay was always the crowd-puller). The crackling snow, the animals lying down in their stalls silently at midnight in homage to the infant king; and, particularly, the glorious carolling heritage (my favourite is the rarely sung Nurse’s Carol, joining the choir being the sole highpoint of a miserable year long ago working in a hospital):
As the evening draws on
And dark shadows alight
With slow-breathing ox-en
To warm him all ni-i-ght
The prince of compassion
Concealed in a byre
Watches the rafters above him
RESPLENDENT WITH FIRE.
Good King Wenceslas, with his foreign fountains and strange ways, was as mystical to me as anything in Narnia; likewise the three kings, whose sonorous names and inexplicable gifts—
Myrrh have I
Its bitter perfume
Breathes a life
Of gathering gloom
Sorrowing, sighing
Bleeding, dying
Sealed in the stone cold tomb.
—gave me strange, excited thrills.
In my teens, I dressed up as a Victorian wench and took part in carol-singing tableaux at the local castle; the same one where, years later, I would get married—at Christmas time, the pillars swathed in holly and ivy. (Incidentally, if you’re having a secular service and aren’t allowed to mention the word God, I can save you some time and effort and inform you that the only carol that legally passes muster for a non-religious Christmas wedding is ‘Deck the Halls’.)
One of the great joys of having your own children, of course, is sharing Christmas with them. My husband, a Kiwi, spent all his childhood Christmases barbecuing on the beach and is entirely unfussed by the whole affair, but I had such wonderful Christmases that I want to make it as special as I can. Still, how to do that without fundamentally accusing their teachers of lying—or, in fact, lying?
And it is, after all, one of the greatest stories ever told—the little baby born in a manger, far from home. It has intrigue, small children (drummer boys are particularly popular in my house), stars, angels, various animals and getting to sleep outdoors—all catnip to littlies.
But, as that wonderfully conflicted cove John Betjeman put it:
…is it true? For if it is…
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare—
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
Because, of course, accepting the Christmas story means accepting a whole bunch of other stuff; doctrine perhaps not quite so tea-towel—and stuffed-lamb-friendly. And now my three-year-old is at pre-school—a Catholic pre-school, no less, it being our local—of course, the questions have begun.
‘Are you having the Baby Jesus?’ he says, prodding my large pregnant stomach.
‘No,’ I say. ‘That’s been done.’
‘Oh. Are you having a monkey?’
‘I hope not.’
I find him in the bedroom