Bah! (Christmas is coming!)

One thing that is really starting to annoy me is Christmas. Not the festive season, but the fact that everyone seems to be celebrating it early. A house on my paper round have already put up the Christmas lights, and although the house looks really pretty covered in fibre optics and fairy lights, with santas falling down the chimney e.t.c it is ONLY NOVEMBER.
To me, ‘Christmas’ is Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. The roots of the festive season are from the Christian beliefs, as Christmas is a Christian festival. We count down the days till Christmas using Advent Calendars (hence the name), and Advent is a time when Christians prepare for the coming of Christ. (At Holy Trinity, one way people are invited to do this is to sign up the Christmas figures journey, which is where Mary and Joseph figures e.t.c come to the persons house for a set time. This person then takes the figures to the next person and so on, until the last person takes them to the church for the Christmas services). Christmas is the time that Jesus was born, which is why most primary schools get the reception class to re-enact the nativity play for the millionth time, and everyone starts wearing teacloths on their head to represent the 3 wise men. At Christmas, Christians celebrate the birth of Christ, but our ‘new’ Christmases are not reflecting this anymore. People are getting so carried away with presents and lights that they are forgetting the true meaning of the festival, and the significance of it.
One major part of the new Christmas is presents. Parents, relatives and doting aunties and uncles spend loads getting their spoilt brats Christmas presents, such as expensive TVs, Hi-fis, mobiles, game boys e.t.c. and even PS2s and other expensive game consoles. To most children, Christmas is about getting presents, but the tradition of giving presents relates back to the Christian beliefs. The presents we give each other are supposed to represent God’s present to us – Jesus, his son. Most children do not know this, or fail to recognise the symbolism, which means that more and more generations are getting dragged down the lane of forgetting, and remodelling the old traditions.
The shops are already advertising Christmas sales, printing loads of Christmas catalogues, all aimed at teens and kids who want the new Robosapien or a digital dodah under the Christmas tree. The garden centres/DIY stores are busy flogging Christmas trees to every Tom Dick and Harry, by reducing them by up to 20% and the shops themselves are already full of lights/wreaths and Christmas decorations. May I remind people that it is ONLY NOVEMBER. As I was saying at the start of this nitpick, I said that one house had already put up the Christmas lights. I spotted another house with a fully decorated Christmas tree in the window. It is ONLY NOVEMBER.
In the church calendar, the Christmas season begins when we get the yellow service cards out, i.e. at the start of Advent. Advent starts at the beginning of December, so it is not Christmas yet. In the old days, the Christmas tree was put up on Christmas Eve, (that was what Christmas Eve was for) and everyone helped to decorate the tree, put up decorations and stick numerous bits of paper together to make paper chains. In our house, the tree usually goes up about 2 or 3 weeks before Christmas day. In the old days, the pressies were put under the tree on Christmas Eve, and you opened them on Christmas Day. Now, the pressies can be under the tree from when ever you put the tree up, which is fine because most trees have a lot more presents than what they used to have under them.
However, I see no reason for us to start celebrating Christmas in November, because the festive season hasn’t started yet. According to A, B-wise has been playing Christmas music at the customers since September, which is ridiculous, and already the shops and supermarkets have put up the tinsel and the ridiculous red hanging things in Sainsburys. My friend’s mum has already done all her Christmas shopping. This can’t be right. I don’t leave my Christmas shopping to the last minute, but I normally do it closer to the time. Surely the fun goes if you do it so early?