6 December 2006
Fascinating Festive Fact #6: 80% of people don't feel properly Christmassy until they finish work
Meg says:It's true. Even though shops, manufacturers and marketing agencies conspire to make it come earlier and earlier every year, the can't quite make it happen.
Of course, they can strew tinsel and glittered reindeer and white-fur-trimmed red things all over the place - and oh, how they do - and they can put decorations and mince pies on the shelves in the second week of september, and they can even start playing George Michael (early era, not the more recent of his discography) and Slade in all the shops in October, but they can't make it feel like Christmas.
No sirree bob.
The thing is, when you're young and time is a long river, you get your signals about the time of year from your family, from school and from the media, because your days are packed with all sorts of other interesting things and so you are easier to influence. If they're playing cheesy Christmas songs in the shops, if must be nearly present time, right?
As you get older, and you have to make your own way along the river rather than being carried by it, you become more aware of the passing of time, and the things which stand in between you and particular events. So you count down to events, and see them coming as before, but you can't feel it as completely as once you might have. You know you should, but you realise that there's a big difference between the patina of Christmas gloss and the event itself. So you don't let yourself get too influenced by the carols, the glitter, the turkey ads on telly, and you haul yourself along the long slog towards the event itself.
Because there's so much to DO before you can relax and enjoy it, isn't there? Shopping, cards, travel plans, cat care, trees, secret santa, decorations, parties, work events, food prep, posting dates: it all adds up.
In fact, doesn't it sometimes seem that the amount of preparation is inversely proportional to the amount you enjoy the "holiday season"?
In most cases, despite the weeks of preparation and anticipation which precede it, people tend not to feel properly Christmassy until they've stopped work and it's too late to do anything about Making It Feel Like A Proper Christmas.
So they finish work, wrap whatever's in the cupboard and stick a label on it, have a mince pie and a glass of something, put their feet up, watch nonsense on telly and finally feel the slight nudging disappointment of the actuality of the coming of an event which has been built up and anticipated for so long - like the millennium, or a special birthday, or losing one's virginity - combined with relief that they can just get on with it now and stop bloody talking about it and getting ready for it, mixed with a dash of recklessness based on having two (or sometimes more) days off work.
And that, my friends, is what Christmas feels like.