Christmas is nearly over, and
the world will be back to normal on Monday. I read an article online this
morning that questioned the exact day you should take the decorations down,
because they didn’t know when twelfth night is counted from. If you count from
Christmas Eve then it’s January 5th, so I assume that everybody else
apart from the person who wrote the article counts it from Christmas Day and
takes the decorations down on January 6th. I’ve always had the 6th
as the takedown date; it’s even the punch line to the joke about the person who
hangs themselves on Christmas Day and the police leaving the body there until
the 6th January. People are quick to moan about how Christmas starts
entering our radar too early, but as soon as Boxing Day is over the same moaners
seem to consider it all over. Shops take the decorations down and concentrate
on the sales, people refer to Christmas in the past tense, and you can’t buy a
mince pie anywhere. There should still be brass bands playing in the city
centres until the very last day of Christmas, and shops shouldn’t be so keen to
ram sales down our throats. It is hardly fair on people who work in retail if
they have to get up for work on Boxing Day because they work at an out of town
sofa specialist that opens at six o’clock in the fucking morning. It’s okay for
retail staff with families, as working on Sundays and Bank Holidays is voluntary,
and if you don’t have someone to share your life with then you should be
allowed to do a day’s work for double your usual hourly rate. Maybe Boxing Day
is more than double time, I don’t know. I know that Christmas Day is triple pay
if you want to do it, but I don’t know if Boxing Day is treated as ‘special’ or
if staff just get double as they would for a Sunday. Either way, it’s a double
edged situation because as much as we like to complain about shops opening on
Boxing Day, there must be people stupid enough to go out and buy a new carpet.
We took a walk to Bulwell with
Jack this afternoon. There are two walks to Bulwell from our house, one is quite
well-to-do and the other isn’t. We walked there along the well-to-do route and
walked home along the lower class area, and in both cases it was nice to see
that there were a lot of houses still displaying the decorations. When I take
Jack out at night I am monitoring the houses that are still decorated and even
better, still using lights. Our windows on all three floors are illuminated for
the season, and they will be until tomorrow.
Yes tomorrow! It is an awkward
situation having the 6th falling on a Monday, as people will
technically be going back to work on the last day of Christmas when what they
really should be doing is finishing the Christmas food, watching the last of
the Christmas films, cutting the pictures from cards to use as gift tags next
Christmas, and taking the decorations down. I like making a big deal of the
decoration removing, as I believe that rather than be sad about Christmas
coming to an end, we should be celebrating the final day in style. It isn’t
fair but it is a fact of modern life I suppose. Besides, we decided to take the
decorations down tomorrow in order to start the ‘proper’ New Year afresh on a
Monday. We’ve both had to work a bit during this holiday unfortunately, so the
special feeling has been ruined a bit this year if I’m honest.
This is the time to look
forward though, I am optimistic about 2014; the continuation of my three radio
shows, several podcast projects, and hopefully a lot of filming (I still need
to raise money for filming, thank you for the donations so far, if you haven’t
yet then please chase the link to my latest newsletter at the bottom of this
blog.
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