Waaay too early fat boy!
I was recently commissioned to write a piece detailing how to survive planning a Christmas party. This sent a cold shudder through me, just like the time I forgot to wear knickers on a frosty morning, only unlike that time, a nice pair of apple-catchers wouldn’t stop the chill. What set my spine tingling was the fact that in mid-October, I was being asked to write about the lead up to Christmas in a wholly positive way that actively encouraged people to start getting “into the festive mood” early. Well, here, in a bid to restore cosmic equilibrium, is my guide to surviving the premature run up to Christmas, or Prematuremas.
I probably should have started writing this back in August, when the majority of shops were clearing their seasonal goods aisles of BBQ charcoal and replacing it with Quality Street, but I guess I’ve been in denial about the approach of Prematuremas. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the month of Christmas (or December, as it was formerly known) but I try to refrain from relishing in a warm festive (mulled wine induced) glow until the 1st of said month, so here’s my handy guide to avoiding Prematuremas.
Avoid Shops
Shops are to be avoided at all costs. No sooner have you got back from your summer hols when, *poof* all the supermarket shelves are stocked to the rafters with shiny novelties and boxes of mince pies with a use-by-date that would seem to imply they will outlast the cockroaches in the event of a world leader’s meltdown.
You may be tempted to venture into a shop for vital supplies, but know this. Between September and Christmas, the shops think nothing of playing Prematuremas music and you will leave the store with half a dozen eggs, 3 pints of milk and a partridge in a pear tree stuck in your head for 3 months solid. You have been warned.
Avoid Sofas
Apparently the only time of year anyone buys a sofa is during Prematuremas. The rest of the year we cope perfectly well without feeling the need to upgrade our lounge furniture, and have been making do perfectly well with our existing seating arrangements, but according to the purveyors of such cushiony beasts, our Christmas will be ruined by the one we have now and they have just the irritating finance plan based advert to forewarn us of this fact, every 15 minutes from the beginning of October.
Avoid sofas at all costs. Ignore them, pretend that thing taking up a third of your living room is a deformed piano, leave your visitors standing or perched on the mantelpiece, but whatever you do, don’t acknowledge the symbol of true Prematuremas – the sofa.
Avoid Televisions
It’s not just the festive sofa adverts that dominate Prematuremas, almost all adverts take a turn for the tinsel. What once was a seemingly ordinary, generic product of no fixed season is now a must have Christmas item. According to the Prematuremas adverts, nothing says “Christmas” like a tube of Pringles or an electric screwdriver. I’m pretty sure that we ate crisps-in-a-tube all year round but according to the television, these things will, of course, make you feel as festive as snow-covered reindeer droppings.
You may think you can handle a few toy adverts and misguided power tool promos, but for the love of all that is Autumnal, avoid your television or you risk coming face to face with the one thing on earth guaranteed to kick your pre-Christmas spirit into warp drive – the “Holidays are coming” Coke advert. One glimpse of that red and white truck convoy and you may as well kiss goodbye to your sanity (underneath the Prematuremas mistletoe).
Avoid Facebook
To be fair, Facebook is probably best shunned all year round, but during Prematuremas it should be avoided for one reason in particular; the smug status update. There is always one “friend” who joyfully updates their status on the 28th September with “Phew! Finished all the Xmas shopping. LOL”. LOL indeed [insert heavy dose of scalding hot sarcasm here].
This person probably did their homework on the first day of the school holidays, will also be the first person to have filled out all their tax returns and will always be the first to leave a party. Probably because they’ve been kicked out for making everyone feel so bad for actually having a life instead of spending all year Christmas shopping and filling out tax forms.
Avoid Relatives
To the younger members of the family, Prematuremas means getting out the Argos catalogue and circling every item within its pages that their tiny brain desires, delicately planted there by the pneumatic drill that is advertising. Not only will they have defaced every page of the catalogue, including the lingerie and eternity ring sections by October, they will spend every day for months ensuring that anyone who crosses their path is fully aware of exactly which “It” toy will prevent them from being cast out of polite tweenage society.
Meanwhile, your older relatives will force you to face your fear of Santa in September, when they begin their regular inquisition into what gifts you want this year. I can honestly say that having spent all year avoiding wanting things at the behest of my bank manager, this is going to be three months of confused rocking, hiding behind the s… well, we don’t talk about that.
Avoid Colleagues
For some reason, work colleagues run out of things to talk about around September. They’ve asked all the questions they care to ask about rained-out picnics, summer holidays and children’s returns to school, so what next? Sadly for us, it’s Christmas. This means that every time you enter into the obligatory chit chat necessary to use the coffee machine, you will be asked by no fewer than 3 people what your plans are for Christmas and if you’ll be going “home” this year? Home? I go there every night, thanks, it’s where I live!
If you manage to survive the Prematuremas water cooler chatter, regularly giving you a countdown to Christmas from day 100, you have one more office colleague to contend with. She foolishly went into a supermarket and came out with a hideous aural infection; she caught Christmas Carols and will be humming them every day from now until February. One tip – it’s pretty hard for them to hum Jingle Bells while coughing up teeth.
So there it is. In order to survive from now until the 1st of Christmas without suffering Prematuremas, you simply have to avoid all shops, household furniture, entertainment, social media, friends, family, colleagues… how hard can it be?
Pretty Feet, Pop Toe 
Okay, I have to admit that I am that person who likes to have all of my Christmas shopping done by Halloween. But that’s because I like to be done before all the “festive” shoppers join me.
(I can’t reply to your comment because I’m avoiding you) 😉
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How did you get so smart at such a tender age? Christmas in October is one of my favourite complaints. Good for you…
With wisdom comes great misanthrope. 😉
Ohhh that gets on my bloody wick too
“Going home for Christmas?”
No, I am home you bloody Johnny come lately bloody Johnny Foreigner Johnny.
Yours,
Adolf x
It makes me wonder if people ever truly cut the umbilical cord when they call their parents’ domicile “home”, 20 years after setting up their own.
I don’t DO Christmas, haven’t done for years. Blessed relief. If only I could avoid shopping for the next two months…..but my earplugs may provide a little relief.
I have a history of also not “doing” Christmas but I haven’t seemed to manage to get everyone else in the UK on board, so this year I’m going to throw myself at it and drown myself in mulled wine and pine needles. Not before the 1st of Christmas though!
You know, I have never heard of “Argos”, so I used your link to look it up.
Now, the ad at the very top of the first page, said, “Offer ends 6/11/2012” (It has been done for months!). That doesn’t sit well with me that they will talk about Christmas, but display ads that are months expired right on the front page!
Scott
Excuse me while I let out a terribly English chortle, but you see, the UK date format goes small/medium/large, day/month/year (as it should be) so the offer still stands for a few more days, if you felt so inclined to persue your £5 voucher. 😉
Ah, Chortle away! I did not know this.
Scott
Every day’s a school day! Just today I learned that housework is exactly why 50’s housewives ended up mainlining gin.
I quite like Christmas, although Christmas shopping and Christmas stock in shops in SEPTEMBER depresses me somewhat. Your post is pretty much an excellent guide into how to avoid the otherwise inescapable awfulness of Christmas, and for that, I thank you 🙂
I saw the “Holidays Are Coming” ad this weekend. There’s no hope for me, SAVE YOURSELVES!
It’s the 5th of November here and the first advert was on just this week, there is as yet no xmas carols playing in the shopping malls, and christmas stock is only quietly creeping on to the aisles – it was a pretty extreme method of avoiding prematuremas in the UK from August onwards, but emigrating 11,000 miles to Queensland, where at Xmas everyone chills out, goes to the beach, works on their suntan and has an actual HOLIDAY……..has been without a doubt, the perfect cure 🙂
11,000 miles seems perfectly reasonable to me. Very well played.
Wise advice that I have already followed to the hilt – by moving to Bangladesh where the majority of the country is Muslim and you never EVER get Christmas TV adverts…
Merry Christmas to you, by the way, and happy New Year sales. They should be starting about now aren’t they?…
New Year sales started in August, a week before the pre-Christmas sales and just 3 days after the Easter stock arrived. If you pay your calendar right, you almost get paid to buy sofas and carpets!
Finally, I find someone who agrees that Christmas must wait until at the very earliest December 1st. Here in the States we do have Thanksgiving to act as a bit of a buffer, but really there aren’t as many incentives for retailers there unless they sell food, so off everyone goes into a Christmas fit as of November 1. And here it’s Thanksgiving that gets the furniture sales. Then appliances, into January. Which might do me well this year, as the homebuying is ONCE AGAIN on hold and at this rate I’ll be moving in while a turkey is running from a cleaver-wielding housewife on the Wednesday prior to her in-laws’ arrival. Translation: cheaper washers & dryers and flat-screen televisions for me!
I think if the UK had Thanksgiving, we’d have to start our Christmas shopping in May to accommodate it and that would mean moving Easter sales to December and then we’d need to start our Summer adverts in January, when really we don’t get our two days of Summer sun until August. I’m giving thanks that we don’t have Thanksgiving!
I think I shall start greeting everyone as soon as the new year starts. Happy Christmas, it’s only 225 days to go!!! It’s just November and I am so sick of it. Unfortunately can’t avoid grocery stores and their winter/white christmas carols (we are in the tropics ya idiot, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow ain’t happening!).
“Oh the weather outside is frightful…”
“No it’s not, it’s August and we live in Los Angeles.”
I keep saying I don’t want to participate in Christmas but no one believes me, they think it’s a joke. I do, however, completely agree with avoiding shops and tv (and the radio for that matter) starting around September 😉
This is the first year since childhood that I’ve actually been looking forward to Christmas, all other years I’ve spent having to justify to people why it’s not a time of joy and goodwill for everyone. You stand strong! (Especially as it isn’t even the 1st of the month of Christmas yet!)
Thanks for the encouragement, I’m trying!