Deck the halls
Here in .au, Halloween isn’t really that big, we don’t have thanksgiving and Guy Fawke’s night smouldered and eventually went out in the early 80s when you ceased to be allowed to buy fireworks over the counter. (Not sure if other .aulians celebrated that one much or if it was just my family on account of the English/English background.)
There’s no real pre-Xmas holiday that has to be finished off before the tinsel can come out and miniature pine plantations start to thin out. This means that Xmas decorations can go up sometime around mid-August. Okay, that’s maybe a tad early but I noticed the greenery was hanging in Adelaide Railway Station well before the end of October.
I noticed a local news website had a poll recently, which asked the question: are Xmas decorations put up too early?
I would argue that no, they aren’t. If they went up at, say, the start of December, it would deprive people of the opportunity to complain that they’re going up too early and people in general, I’ve noticed, like to complain about such trivialities.
I’m all for them going up early. I’ve adopted this general position based on one specific instance of intheshopsearlyness. While I do like mince pies, the sooner they get them off the shelves and replace them with hot cross buns, the better. I think bakers should be making an effort to have them in stores, first thing boxing day. Especially this year, as Easter is almost as early as it can possibly be (Easter Sunday on March 23rd!) so by all means put up the tannenbaum as early as possible, as long as it means you do the same with the best damn savoury/sweet breakfast buns ever.
As an aside, there’s a Christian bookstore near where I work. They sell a lot of bibles, a lot of Christian music and I probably won’t be buying the Richard Dawkins Box Set there. The thing I noticed though is that they had a Christmas tree in the window, adorned with tinsel and silver baubles. I know most churches prefer to have the more Christian symbol of the nativity play, obv and I would have thought this would be the case in a Christian bookshop. Isnt’ a Christmas tree a little, I don’t know, pagan?
