by Jeremy Quinton
Home >> A British Christmas - Happy New Year!
This year, a certain famous London department store (not mentioning any names, but it rhymes with “Farrods�?) set up its Christmas display in August. Yes, August! While you were probably enjoying your summer holidays, shoppers in London were putting tinsel and novelty Santas in their shopping baskets. Most likely whilst listening to Christmas music too. And when one shop does it, they all do. So with four full months before Christmas Day, many shopping centres in Britain were fully in the festive mood.
It gets worse. In July I saw signs in restaurants that said “book your Christmas meal now�?. In July! That’s almost closer to the previous Christmas than it is to the next one!
So by the time Christmas Day actually arrives, I’m rather sick of it. Christmas Day is great, but once Boxing Day (26th December) comes I want it all to end. That’s why I’m happy it’s all over now, for another few months anyway. I know that now, I live in a culture where Christmas is still in full swing, but I’m not used to that yet! For me, Boxing Day is the day when the almost half a year of Christmas draws to a close. All the advertisement breaks during the traditional James Bond film on Christmas Day are full of adverts for the Boxing Day sales…
What about the 6th of January? Well apart from the religious significance, Twelfth night in Britain has no real meaning. It’s traditionally the time when you are supposed to take down your Christmas decorations! The Three Wise Men don’t take presents to Britain. Maybe their camels can’t get through quarantine…
No, now I’m looking forward to New Year. I love New Year. I always have such a feeling of optimism: the shortest day of the year has passed; days are getting longer; the Christmas muzak has stopped; the weather, although it won’t noticeably improve for a while, it isn’t really going to get any worse. We have the whole year ahead of us!
I think you should start the year as you mean to go on. Maybe that’s why I don’t quite understand the curious tradition of getting so drunk on New Year’s Eve that you spend New Year’s Day with the mother of all hangovers. On New Year’s Day I plan to get up at first light, and go and walk up a mountain.
I hope you have a happy and a prosperous new year. And don’t forget, you’ve only got 362 shopping days left until next Christmas…
Released under the following licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDeriv
You are free to copy, distribute and display the contents of this article but you must give credit to and mention the original author. You are not allowed to use these contents for commercial purposes, and you may not modify them to make any derivative works.
For full licence description, go to: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.1/es/deed.en
Posted on http://www.weeklyletter.com at 2006-12-28 11:15:00 +0100
Copyright (C) ITT (http://www.itt.es) and Planet Lingua (http://www.lingua.es)
We have more weekly letters by Jeremy
Poll for this weekly letter
Who brings your presents?
Licencing
You are free to copy, distribute and display the contents of this article but you must give credit to and mention the original author. You are not allowed to use these contents for commercial purposes, and you may not modify them to make any derivative works.
(click the above link for more information)
Add a comment
Here, in Manila, we are still singing On the Nth day of Christmas my true love sent to me…a partridge on a pear tree. I thought it was a partry Gina pear tree.
When Wesley started putting on carols early in November, I followed suit. Here, in Manila, you start hearing a young Michael Jackson sing “People making bliss…” as early as October. Here, in Manila, my friend Raissa has a Christmas tree up all year round. The last time I came and saw it, it was June. At Christmas, she re-decorates it.
I will be welcoming 2007 exactly seven hours before all of you guys in Spain. HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Dave…perhaps the most uplifting bit of your article for me is where you say that the days are already starting to get longer! The “British Christmas” outlined in your article reminds me not only of the more commercial nature of Christmas there (compared to here) but also of that curious British thing of getting ready/ looking forward to something for ages…and then just when it happens…wishing it was already finished! Here, with “Christmas” lasting longer…you don’t actually miss it if you blink your eyes.
(I think I know which shop you are talking about – is it the one in Mensington?)
I am not one for farras, juergas, and the like but New Year’s Eve is an important exception. I went to bed at 2:00 yesterday, 14:00 if you will, and had nothing even close to a hangover, and certainly not because of a lack of drinking. You just have to know how to do it right and with the right people.
I wouldn’t have begun this year in any other way. I ended and began the year not as I plan to continue but in the most entertaining way possible with some of my favourite people. If we were to start as we are going to continue, we wouldn’t have New Year’s Day off and I would have bitterly contributed to this Weekly yesterday.
To sum up, fun. That is what New Year’s is for me. As far as the length of the Christmas season is concerned, you all know I love Christmas. But I love Christmas AT Christmas (mid-November to early January at very most). October, be it in Britain or in the Philippines, seems a bit excessive to me.
Happy 2007!
So, David, did you really get up early on New Year’s Day to go hiking? I don’t like the idea of starting a new year with a hangover, but I would never manage to wake up early on New Year’s Day! I went to bed about two hours after midnight, which I think is reasonably early for such a day/night. I got up at 9 in the morning, and I understand that, to go hiking, it’s best to get up at 6 or 7. So I got up too late to go hiking…
My highlight of January 1st, 2007? I watched “Muppets from Space” on TV!
Thank you for all your comments!
In the end we didn’t go up a mountain, as we would have to go by car and I didn’t want to be on the road early in the morning, especially some of the smaller roads (not because I had had a drink, but because of others that may have done…)
However, we did get up early and went for a walk from one end of the city to the other along the three beaches here in Donostia. There were quite a lot of people actually, and it was lovely fresh weather. Some of the people we saw were still up from the night before, but were looking a little worse for wear!
Happy 2007!
Sometimes I think that it is too early when the commercial center start with the lights and the things realationated with Christmas , but if I consider that start after the Thanksgiving Day is sooner start in July must be a nightmare. From my point of view Christmas has became a date for consumption forgetting the real sense of this date.