Before we begin (or perhaps after you've digested my latest rant, below), please do drop by the Venue food and drink pages where you can read my considered opinions on scoffing in and around Bath (including a recent Faulty Towers experience - and no, that wasn't a typo!). Also, news just in: read my ramblings about growing up and learning to eat in Liverpool here. Meanwhile, back at the disco...
The streets in the city centre are hung with as yet unlit frosted stars indicating a blaze of cheer soon to light our way as the nights draw in. In the shop windows, faceless cardboard dummies draped with dreary displays of school uniforms and drab winter coats have been replaced by elegant models wearing jewel-coloured velvet frocks, fake fur shrugs and sparkly stockings, while plum puddings, chocolate snowmen and crackers of both the edible and the frivolous variety have started creeping onto the supermarket shelves; any day now, I know I’ll be greeted by the sound of Roy Wood wishing such frothy frippery could be part of an everyday routine as I walk through the door. Bring it on! As far as I’m concerned, Christmas can’t come soon enough.
Of all the weary adages spouted by people who don’t know what to talk about, the one regarding Christmas coming earlier every year is, to my mind, the most tedious, unimaginative drone of all. Christmas does, of course, fall on exactly the same date every year, and the commercial calendar adheres to the festive kick start date with precise regularity. To be fair to the fat cats, they never really start whispering the C-word much before the clocks turn back - and they never did. Even in the days before Halloween represented a lucrative cash cow all of its own, the mercantile merriment started in mid-October and has yet to be usurped by the green face paint and mechanically-lit pumpkins that in themselves bring a flourish of novelty to the otherwise prosaic shopping experience.
But on a less pedantic note, why do so many people put so much energy into hating the fact that, for an average of around 10 weeks of a 52 week allocation, we’re subjected to a far less subtle but substantially prettier marketing campaign than we are all year round? Come the start of November, the very same folk who dominate dinner parties with dull, lengthy debates about buy-to-rent properties, interest-free credit cards and the pros and cons of price comparison checkers are talking about the Christmas campaign as though they’ve never noticed the presence of a shop, TV advert or inflated price tag in their lives. How does a big red bow stuck to the corner of the 31” HD flatscreen TV that they secretly covet or on a box containing the latest toy suddenly turn these already unnecessary fripperies into wildly offensive representations of capitalism and greed? Far from being the arch social commentators they think they’re showing themselves to be by spouting all the cynical anti-Christmas clichés they can muster, all the noël naysayers really do is show themselves for the gullible fools - part Grinch, part green eyed monster - that they really are. Nobody is ever forced to go shopping and marketing campaigns, however pernicious, only make you feel obliged to spend, spend, spend of you’re stupid, stupid, stupid enough to do so. Anybody can choose to ignore the bright lights, the tinsel and the flashing reindeers that dominate the urban landscape, and wear earmuffs to block out the sound of Noddy Holder bellowing the inevitable if they so wish. But what a waste of a free-for-all frivolity that would be! By cherishing the cheer and allowing a little sparkle into your soul before the inevitable January blues bring the UK back down to earth again with a tedious thud, the miserable, dreary state of UK business as usual is transformed into a winter wonderland all the way through to the January sales. And who’ll be first in the queue when the leftover tat gets reduced to half price? The very same Scrooges who dissed public displays of greed in the first place. But before all that, the 70 days of Christmas are upon us; in my opinion, they can never come too early...or last long enough.
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