So here it is…

“So here it is, ‘Merry Christmas’, everybody’s having…(‘fun’?).”
Permit me a degree of scepticism about that lyric, for, in my experience, there’s quite a lot about Christmas that doesn’t match such a description these days.

I could go on about Christmas starting in August, and all the commercialism, and those blooming Christmas adverts, and the intolerable Christmas musak piped around shops, and the Christmas price markups for a picture of holly on the packaging, and the horrors of cooking Christmas lunch…but I won’t, because you’ll think me a grumpy old bugger, like Scrooge.

I must state that, honestly, I do enjoy much about Christmas, but it is no longer as special to me as it once was.

For a start, Christmas wasn’t really thought about until you opened the first door on your Advent calendar. (Not containing a chocolate, or, God forbid, a Lego character, in those days. No, just a picture of an Angel, or a Shepherd, or something suitably pertinent to the Christmas story.) That was fun.

Shops were of the ‘corner’ or ‘high street’ variety, though supermarkets were just beginning to peek over the parapet in some towns. No mangled versions of Christmas songs played over the tannoy to stop you asking the shopkeeper for what you needed. By mid-December, the Christmas stock would be in, and exotic things would appear – dates in boxes with plastic forks, dried figs all squished up flat in a package with a camel on the front, bags of satsumas, nets of chocolate coins – all thing otherwise unavailable, except at Christmas.

Towns put up their Christmas decorations in December, and, somehow, they made the place feel festive. They were there to be festive, and not there only to attract people to the town centre to see how much money could be squeezed out of them.

Oh dear. I’ve started on a reminisce and still come round to the subject of commercialism. So, so sad, what’s been done to Crimbo.

What I do enjoy about the festive season are the Christmas trees; the church services (including the ‘carol’ ones); the company of family; an adequate (but not excessive) quota of booze, chocolates, mince pies and turkey sandwiches; and being able sincerely to wish people a very merry Christmas, which I will now do…

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to my friends, family and anyone else who stumbles across this post.