For someone who really enjoys
this time of the year, I am having a hard time with Christmas this year. My
spirit of the season just won’t rise to the surface and no amount of Christmas
films or food seems to be helping. It could be that I am jaded by the
commercialism surrounding Christmas, although that has never really bothered me
before as I certainly don’t observe the religious element of the season.
I recently read an article,
(although I unfortunately can’t remember the author) in which it was suggested
that we only have Christmas every four years. This is something I will return
to in a minute.
One of the annual festive film
viewings for my daughter and I was the straight-to-video Sesame Street feature Elmo Saves Christmas. The plot centres on the annoying
character Elmo waiting up for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, and Santa giving
Elmo a snow globe that grants wishes. Elmo thinks that this would be a
wonderful thing that everybody will be thankful for. However, back in the North
Pole an alarm goes off alerting the elves to get back to work making toys for
the next day, as every day is now Christmas Day. Santa enlisted a trainee
reindeer to help Elmo travel through time (I haven’t seen this film for ages so
I’m only going from memory) and see the consequence of his wish. They travel
forward to Easter and meet a pissed off Easter bunny who is now having to
compete with the fact that it is Christmas Day, and sings the song ‘Give Your
Friend An Easter Egg For Christmas’ to emphasise
his displeasure. They also see what Christmas Day will be like on Independence
Day, Halloween and Thanksgiving. By the time they travel forward to the next
December 25th, Christmas is no longer anything special and the world
is a much sadder place. Big Bird is sad because his best friend Mr.
Snuffleupagus has gone away to visit his grandmother and can’t return because
there are no buses on Christmas Day and he can’t write to his friend because
there is no post. The Fix-It shop run by Louis and Maria has gone out of
business due to being closed on Christmas Day and as a result the street is
littered with broken electrical appliances, everyone is fed up of It’s A Wonderful Life being broadcast every single day,
nobody has a voice left as they have been singing carols for the last 365 days,
Christmas trees are endangered and Santa Claus is contemplating retirement. Worst
of all, the elves have become so tired and overworked that they have started to
make very shoddy toys.
Elmo comes to his senses of
course (spoiler alert), and realizes that if every day was Christmas then
Christmas wouldn’t be special. All of this brings me to the original point I
was going to make. I think every four years is stretching things a little, but
I do think that Christmas on alternate years is something to consider.
We all like to complain about
the fact that Christmas starts to appear in the shops in the summer, but we don’t
do anything about it. Why don’t we boycott the shops that start celebrating
Christmas when we’re still wearing shorts? If we started the Christmas shopping
and preparations on the first of December then the shops would see how
pointless the whole thing is. By the time December rolls around we (by ‘we’ I
mean ‘I’) have grown tired of the sight of Christmas.
If we reduced Christmas to
every other December, we could build up that level of anticipation that we used
to have as children when Christmas was the best thing ever. I am all for the
idea of skipping next Christmas and carrying on as normal, but celebrating the
season of goodwill in 2015. As an adult you tend to forget what Christmas meant
to you as a child, because of all the work involved for a start but also
because Christmas isn’t really for grownups.
Of course I have to convince
Mandi about this plan, which will never happen as she loves Christmas. One of
the things that attracted me to her in the first place (although I haven’t seen
the full list) was that I love Christmas as much as she did. She had
ex-boyfriends who didn’t celebrate, and my own ex-wife was the least
Christmassy person imaginable; she only put a tree up instead of decorating the
whole house and all her decorations were the same colour.
The advantages are huge
though. You have an even longer gap between viewings of the Christmas films in
your collection, you have longer to organise it, if money is a problem then you
have longer to budget, and you don’t have to put up with six months of
marketing. I want this to become a reality, and in the spirit of the season I’d
like to wish my blog readers a Merry Christmas for now and 2015.
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