I would not ban Christmas. I think it was one of Oliver Cromwell’s biggest mistakes[1]. He may not have been the author of the legal ban but upholding it was a mistake (from 1644 to 1660).
But and there’s a but. Here the sun is shining and the temperature is mild. There are still bees landing on the flowers in my garden. Wander into a British supermarket or garden centre on the first of October and guess what I find. Rows and rows of Christmas goods. Anything from food in fancy tins to cheap toys from the far east. One or two shops take this to ridiculous extremes. Enter the front door and the first encounter is piles of Christmas goods. No possibility of ignoring the day that’s nearly 3-months away.
I find it insulting. It’s like we (shopkeepers) must shift this stuff, so we are going to make you pay attention. Make you loop your way through brightly coloured isles. For parents it must be awful.
The world turned upside down. Let’s bypass Halloween. Let’s bypass 5th November (Gunpower plot). Let’s bypass any other traditional winter festivals. Let’s go straight to Christmas.
I’m not alone. One local garden centre is especially bad. With the idea of continuing my efforts to eke out the last Autumnal colours and buy some compost, I walked through the doors. As I weaved may way through cavalcades of shiny lights and stuffed Farther Christmases my heart sank. Totally unimpressed with the tinsel and plastic trees. Popping out the other side, into the part of the garden centre that is a garden centre, I sighed. Others around me sighed too.
“I didn’t come here for that” and we agreed. It was too much. I wouldn’t have said the same in mid-November but, so early in the season, I was in no mood for tacky festive celebrations.
Should I lobby my Member of Parliament to ban the display of Christmas goods in the shops more than a month before the day of celebration? It’s worth thinking about. Today, I can’t say we have a puritan-dominated Parliament so there’d be little risk of igniting a religious conflict. That said, I imagine most parliamentarians have bigger fish to fry just now.
Let’s not ban Christmas but a modicum of common sense from the commercial sector wouldn’t go amiss. Ramming Christmas goods down our throats is bad practice. I know that the takings for a lot of commercial businesses go up in the festive season.
My question is – are shops there to serve customers or is it the other way around. We all like celebrations. A saturation of homogonous red and white for weeks and weeks is not celebration. It’s jolly depressing.
Shopkeepers may say – you have a choice. Don’t go in our shops if that’s your reaction. That’s a viewpoint that could drive a call to outlaw the unloading of artificial jollity on an unsuspecting public. Forcing us to grind our way through layers of stuff destined for landfills in January next.
Oliver Cromwell’s era came to an end as foolishness took over. 365 years later I think we can do without 365 days of Christmas. British winter festivities amount to more than colourful biscuits.
[1] https://cromwellmuseum.org/did-oliver-cromwell-ban-christmas/
