Another Friday, another weekend, another month…
..And so it seems the silly season is nearly upon us. With the shops beginning to fill up with wrapping paper, gaudy greetings cards and 101 useless things you never knew existed, let alone needed! It won’t be long now before the streets are festooned with decorations, the houses and residential areas are dressed to look like Disneyland (mush to the glee of the Electricity companies and distress of any low flying aircraft!) the shops, cafes, and radio stations are all blaring out cheesy Christmas songs telling us all to love each other and how wonderful it is that it’s snowing (I suspect that the writers of these songs have never shopped in Bluewater during December, or experienced TFL during the winter!) and the TV companies are sending their archivists into the basement to dust off the copies of ‘Sound of Music’, ‘Wizard of Oz’ and ‘The Great Escape’.
Now I’m not about to yell ‘bar humbug!’ and stalk off kicking Tiny Tim’s crutch out from under him, nor am I about to start preaching about the over-commercialization of Christ’s birth and how we should all be spreading his love etc.. I’m one of the first to admit that I love Christmas, I love the food, the drink, I love giving presents and I SUPER love receiving them (though cheque are readily accepted as well!!), I love getting a week or so off work, I love the parties and in some cases I even enjoy the songs (I mean who doesn’t like The Pogues ‘Fairytale of New York’?), however I do think that things have become a little too over the top.
Take the decorations as an example. I love the Blackheath Village lights. I love the ramshackle way that they’re strung across the streets (Tranquil Passage on a misty evening during December is one of the most charming sights you can see), I love the simplicity of them and I love the fact that they’re put up by locals who have (certainly in recent years) only actually got around to taking them down 2 weeks before they have to put them back up again. Now take a look at the Regents Street lights, which have progressively been sold each year as a sort of street long, lit bill board. I mean what’s Christmassy about the characters of the latest Disney film? I think it’s a shame to see something like that get sold to the highest bidder, rather than having any regard for some sort of festive theme.
As for the music, it would appear that proper carol singing has been confined to church and the local shopping centre. I can’t remember the last time that I saw a group of children going door to door singing carols. I wonder whether this is as a result of the concerns over taking a group of small children around after dark, or simply a reflection of the increased cynicism of home owners, who, thanks to continual bombardment by everything from Jehovah’s witnesses to ‘reformed’ youths selling sponges, are so unlikely to open the front door after dark that there is honestly no point in going out anymore.
Even the professional music seems to have lost its passion. Gone are the days of the Pogues, Bing & Bill, Dean & Nat, Shaky, etc, replaced instead by the sort of apathetic dirge that’s so formulaic that it could have been generated by computer, rather than actually written. Now I’m not saying that Christmas hits were ever the height of musical sophistication. I mean take Maria Carey’s ‘All I want for Christmas’, a song so horrible that Sam would have rather kicked the driver out of a car travelling at 80mph, risking certain death, than listen to even 5 seconds. Christmas music was never brilliant, but it was fun and we did care who got the No.1 slot (an interest that died the day that Noel Edmonds and Mr. Blobby released a Christmas hit).
So what to do? I doubt that much will change. I don’t expect the music will ever be good. I don’t expect people will start flocking to midnight mass and I certainly don’t expect people to stop buying me presents. I guess I just hope that we can get to enjoy it all a little more, without it constantly being rammed down our throats and out of our wallets.
I don’t know what I want for Christmas this year (well I do, but I’ve measured and it turns out as Aston Martin won’t fit down the chimney!), but I know what I don’t want and that’s to feel like even the snow is branded by Nike and that Santa is sponsored by Coca cola…
…that said, it’s unquestionable that the true sign for the start of Christmas remains the first hearing of the sleigh bells and the chant of ‘Santa Claus is coming’ as the Coke lorry drives through the night!
Stay Groovy all.
DG.xx