And so this is..er..NOT Christmas!

If you are full of the joys of the forthcoming Christmas season;  if you have just finished wrapping the last on your list of Christmas gifts and fixing home-made little Hobbycraft holly leaves and berries to it;  if you have all your Christmas cards written and in a wobbly pile on the sideboard waiting to be posted, please don’t read on. You won’t like it. You really won’t.

Thing is, I used to like Christmas and I probably still do. In our house I was the spirit of Christmas – especially after a couple of glasses of good champagne or – wistful memories coming up….brandy and babychams – but only from about the week before.

Yes, I concede that you have to think about the nearest and dearest abroad in advance lest they receive their Yule tidings of great joy at Easter but generally speaking Christmas comes too bloody early.

I resent it. I resent being exploited and made to feel I’m supposed to spend ridiculous amounts on stuff people don’t really want just to keep the sales figures up. I resent the horrible blue Christmas lights in the high streets. I resent all the tacky and rubbishy celebrity books piled high. Three for two?  BOGOF!!!

It’s bad enough the pedestrianised bit of Cheltenham’s broad and leafy Promenade being cluttered with dozens of little wooden cabins like little temples of tat but in Birmingham city centre on Saturday it was a thousand times worse.

The whole of fecking Frankfurt Market seemed to have decamped to New Street. There were fairground rides and wall to wall crap that I can’t imagine anyone wanting to receive, let alone buy.

Plastic stones that light up? Big paper stars that don’t even illuminate but just look slightly hippyish and gather dust? Ultra-smelly grease-laden doughnuts and peculiar deep-fried foreign foods – tiny individual pancakes that cost as much as usual size pancakes. Why? Ah must be because they are so special, such a Frankfurter delicacy.

Not being very familiar with Birmingham we had just passed something similar to the Acropolis (but without the pollution haze) when we found ourselves in a complete hubbub of people and kids. It was a fresh kind of hell composed of milling crowds of people looking a bit blank and uncontrolled hyperactive children clutching sticky cakes full of E numbers which they waved about and rubbed against your clothes as you passed. Lots of noise and colour and cheap horrible fairground rides for the kiddies. Fun for all the family. Yeah right.

It was a total abomination and obliterated my usually dependable direction finding instinct. In my haste to escape the Frankfurt Christmas Market, we strolled along several deserted streets where there wasn’t a soul to be seen. It was quite pleasant for the first mile or so but increasingly reminded me of the time we found ourselves in the banking district of Paris at 11.30pm, so starving hungry I thought we might have to start raiding bins.

DT man had lost all his confidence in my navigational abilities. Doesn’t take much.

“It’s fine,” I said. “If we take the next right and then right again. Anyway, all this exercise will mean lunch will taste even better…”

We turned the corner to be faced with wall of traffic on a deafening and fast section of dual carriageway. A hefty barrier down the middle was high enough and robust enough to keep pantechnicons from hurtling into the on-coming traffic on the other carriageway. Impossible for pedestrians without ropes and petons.

“Ah don’t worry. We don’t have to cross here. These Google maps. Quite out of date” I lied through my teeth.

“We go up to the end of this road here and then over the green by the Cathedral and we’re there. I’ll recognise everything. Seriously!  I promise!”

I’ve been fond of that meaningless phrase since Jack Bauer used it to good effect in 24.

Anyway lunch, eventually, in San Marco, was long and leisurely and warm and relaxing and it wasn’t meant to last until the evening but we left – even then kind of reluctantly – when it was almost dark. I supposed there might be some shopping and lo, a stone’s throw away from the restaurant was Evans Cycles!

We couldn’t pass an Evans Cycles without going in and having a browse but it was disappointingly teeny basement affair with none of the super-duper road bikes I intended to sit on in a dreamy, “Could I possibly afford this baby?” kind of way.

And so into New Street again. It was like one of those measles hallucinations. Honestly, if I had been high on some mind-altering drug it could scarcely have been worse.

It was the other end of the F-f-f-f-f-fecking  Frankfurt Christmas Market – a seemingly endless parade of noise and confusion taking up the entire middle section of the pedestrianised street. Those people who felt like I did and just wanted to pass the whole horrible shebang as quickly as possible were forced to shuffle slowly, packed like sardines, wearing the same expressions as prisoners on their way to the salt mines of Droitwich. (Historically not very accurate. So shoot me)

Why do councils think we should have this stuff foisted upon our City and town centres?

Who are these people? Are they really Frankfurters or Neachells saveloys masquerading as traditional German sausages?

I wondered what, if any effect a stentorian “Raus! Rause!” might have on the teeming masses but I didn’t venture an outburst. It wasn’t their fault – all those other blank-faced poltroons. It was just that I didn’t want Christmas stuffed in my face, in my eyes and in my ears quite yet. It’s too soon. I’ve got other things to do. Give me another month and then tell me it’s Christmas.  And give me a bigger Evans’ Cycles.

In another month, I’ll be making mince pies, wrapping presents (just don’t expect Hobbycraft holly leaves), decking the hall, wondering how to keep the kittens from climbing the Christmas tree and warbling along with the i-touch “All I want for Christmas is yoooooooooooo” while bopping around the kitchen and stirring mulled wine, steaming gently on the hob.

Forget ze travesty of ze German markets invading our High Streets. That’s not the real Christmas.   The real Christmas is home with everybody that matters.

.

Since when has blue been Christmassy anyway?

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Author: janh1

Part-time hedonist.

20 thoughts on “And so this is..er..NOT Christmas!”

  2. I qualify for being one of the most disorganised with respect to Christmas, Jan, but I’m determined to do better this year.

    I am as we speak ordering Christmas presents on T’Internet so forgive me, I’ll read your post in the New Year! Only joking, tomorrow, after I’ve written my Christmas cards. Joke! 😉

  3. Wonderful! Just how I feel! Christmas starts in August, Easter on the 27th of December and every other ‘commercialised’ festivity starts the minute the previous one has finished. I want some space in between being told to spend, spend, spend…

    You will have noticed, I hope, that there is no Christmas banner – the 1st of December is quite soon enough as far as I’m concerned. 🙂

  4. You missed one excellent stall that is there most years, a spice stall that is very reasonable.
    Particularly good smoked paprika and Lebkuchen mixed spice!
    Nice to get one’s hands on European stuff for a change, the British spices are pedestrian to say the least in supermarkets.
    It is much more fun in the evening. The boy and I always went together and had rather a fun time, perhaps it has changed or perhaps you were not in the mood.

  5. I was most certainly not in the mood Tina. It got in my way big time. And the sight of jolly, hand-sewn pointless little stuffed things to hang on doors does not gladden my heart. 🙂
    Now to work. Later.

  6. Nobody has ever accused B’ham of good taste – except the curries, which are allegedly the envy of Mumbhai, known to the senile as Bombay. 🙂

  7. Baah Humbug Jan,

    Yes it is a bit early, but I have done rather well out of two Christmas Craft Fairs so far. It gives folk time to get the pressies in before the usual mad dash on Xmas Eve. I have most of mine bought now and I have to say I feel very good about it.

    I now know I can enjoy the chrimbo experience when it comes and not start to panic about what to get for Aunty Mabel.

    I can’t see me getting away with not getting the decorations out that first weekend in December, I always protest but secretly I love it. 🙂

    Heres hoping your Xmas spirit will descend soon.

  8. “In another month, I’ll be making mince pies, wrapping presents (just don’t expect Hobbycraft holly leaves), decking the hall, wondering how to keep the kittens from climbing the Christmas tree and warbling along with the i-touch “All I want for Christmas is yoooooooooooo” while bopping around the kitchen and stirring mulled wine, steaming gently on the hob.

    Or alternatively you and DT man could avoid the “festive” season completely by booking into The Cave for the duration, cycling or walking in solitary splendour miles of tracks in the surrounding hills, returning to steaming hot showers, fluffy towels, lashing of food courtesy of yours truly and good Alentejo tinto, a roaring log fire and not so much as a Hobbycraft holly leaf (wot dey den?), drizzle of tinsel, snotty relatives or a Slade CD to be found anywhere.

    OZ

  11. I have nearly done my shopping…but only because I do the bulk of it early so that I don’t have to do it in dribs and drabs…. and then I don’t have to get stuck in the crowds when everyone else has left it until the last minute!

    And I’m with you on these continental markets. Not my cuppa t. Nor are all the overly packed ‘Christmas Giftswhich appearinBoots and Debenhms etc. 34

  13. Well if you have club functions at your own house as I do, you had better be cooking and freezing down it can’t all be done last minute and they wouldn’t be very impressed if you hosted a bash and there was no tree!
    Puddings, cakes and mince pies made already, (home made mincemeat of course!) Terrines to go, turkeys in freezer etc.

    It is the present buying that is the stresser, all that crap, hideous shops, no parking and pushing peasants. Golden rule, don’t go downtown in Dec! Gave it up years ago, everyone has far too much. Get rid of that, cut a couple of cheques and suddenly Christmas is quite enjoyable again.

    Anyway we have Thanksgiving too, double cooking. Just think you are lucky you haven’t got that too. Plus I shall do an ‘At Home’
    Cooking keeps one warm on cold days!

  15. Ta for the tip Janus! I always imagined Bradford was the curry centre of the UK. I’d planned a trip there – but then rioting broke out. I cancelled! 🙂

    Greetings furry one. Dec 1st is plenty early enough for me. The Cotswold Craftsmen have a Christmas show on the 4 and 5 Dec with free glass of wine with every purchase.Needless to say, it’s on the diary 🙂

    OZ your place sounds totally heavenly even though you omitted to mention Das Furballen. I’ve never had a good Alentejo. I hesitate to ask his age?
    Oh I see. It is a drink. Apologies. Oh Christmas will be lovely when it arrives, got the two boys coming home and
    mother in law. What could be more joyous? 😉

    Val – solidarity, sister. 😀

    Thanks OMG. Appreciate it that you’ve caught my tone *perfectly.*

    Hi Pseu. How did I know you’d jolly well have everything practically sorted by now? 🙂
    Next monday has been put aside for a preliminary Christmas shop – though it will probably be
    mostly taken up by a civilised lunch in John Lewis and the rewards of afternoon tea. Love the cat thing – that happens to me too these days!

  16. I really want to come to one of your bash’s Tina. Bet they are fab. Doubt you stint on the wine either.

    I used to have busier Decembers – the table tennis club party was my favourite event of the year. So much fun – the kids *loved* it (not mine, I hasten to add. They boycotted TT on the sensible grounds that we liked it) – and the wildlife trust get togethers were less riotous but a friendly, seasonal celebration with good people. Now it’s just the office bash and suppers with friends.

    Venison and walnut casserole, Tina. Probably my favourite on a cold day like today. Double tights today. Just off on bike. Will soon find out if that light frost is slippery.

    Greetings, Papa G. A man after my own heart. 🙂

  18. Ho, Ho, Ho,

    I hate to say it, but I am getting Xmas early this year. Dunno why, I haven’t even seen the Coca Cola ad yet or pre-ordered my copies of the TV and Radio Times. It could be the Xmas markets I am selling at.

    The worry of course is that I may have gone off too soon as it were. There are still a whole 31 days to go. I shall just have to maintain the spirit on a low burn for fear of peaking too early.

  20. Hi Jan!

    Hate early Christmas in October, hate it in November; too much, too soon and most people are jaded by December. When I arrived here in my shorts in December 2003, reeling from jet lag, frost bite and culture shock, I had the most perfect, gorgeous, wondrous Christmas ever, but it was novelty value really. Second year was lovely too. Now it’s, yeah OK, let’s get it over with. I still find a snowfall rather thrilling at Christmas time, until the ghastly realities of hunter-gathering kick-in, or a neighbour in hospital can’t make it home because of the snow.

    However, somehow, at some stage I find myself overtaken by the spirit of Christmas and I do thank the Lord for pickled walnuts. 🙂

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