It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...but it's November!


There’s a Christmassy chill about today.  Something in the air on my lunchtime dash about town made me feel festive for a passing minute.

When can one start to feel festive?  I think not until December.  This may well be because I have a December birthday and when I was a child there was no Christmas activity until my birthday cards had come down.  That served me well until I had Daughter, and then suddenly that didn’t leave enough time to get it all done.

Husband and I had a Christmas shopping day on Wednesday.  We hit the big city (Liverpool) and we hit it hard.  I shopped like it was Christmas Eve, and with a couple of exceptions, pretty much ticked off the list.  We were the couple people didn’t want to sit next to on the train, so surrounded by bags were we.  And I have to admit, I feel a bit smug.  No horrendous Saturday shopping for us, we can relax, fill the house with festive smells like mulled wine and watch Christmas films.  Daughter and I will do festive craft, wrap the gifts creatively and we’ll do all this wearing festive jumpers and through a blurred Hallmark focus.  Ha!

What will really happen?  The remaining presents will no doubt be elusive and cause more worry than the rest of the list put together.  I’ll leave the wrapping, thinking there’s plenty of time, and undoubtedly be wrapping on Christmas Eve.  And I’m not even acknowledging the fact that I haven’t got a clue what to buy Husband (what do you get the man who has everything?!)

I’m on Christmas dinner duty this year, thus establishing it as a biannual tradition (eek!) and the thought of it makes my hair frizz.  So many things at once!  But I think cold pigs in blankets add a certain frisson of excitement to the meal.  Maybe not the cold peas though.

I am planning the table though, because that’s much more fun to waste thinking time on than militarily planning how long I can take to peel each potato (what?  You can buy them ready peeled?  Put me down for some!)  I’ve got some ambitious plans for chair decorations and a permanent tab open on my iPad about making a giant decorative bow.

But the old curmudgeon in me thinks ‘It’s mid-November!’, so I’m going to pretend I can’t see the decorations that are going up, close my ears to the Christmas music that’s playing and come 1st December I shall pretend I see it all for the first time and embrace the festivity.  Unless I can’t find these last presents or run out of sticky tape, and then I’ll be saying Bah Humbug!

Ho ho ho!

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