I’m famed for not much liking Christmas. I’m not religious, so while I understand the relevance of the event to Christians, it’s the seven or eight weeks commercial mayhem leading up to Christmas Day that bothers me. And the pre-Christmas shenanigans start earlier every year.

When I was a kid, Christmas was a time for presents, coloured lights and interminable church services. My mum refused to put a Christmas tree up until about a week before the day, and she didn’t really fully decorate the house until Christmas Eve, normally when the rest of us had gone to church. Then the decorations stayed up until Twelfth Night, by which time we were heartily sick of them. As time went by, people in the UK seemed to have adopted December 1st as decorating day, far too early in my view, but less than a month, and they’ll normally come down on January 1st, not quite Twelfth Night, but a natural time to bring them in.

Arriving in Canada, I was appalled to see for some that Christmas started on November 1st. Most, though, held out until after Remembrance Day on November 11th, which is absolutely a good thing to do. The reason offered by people of my acquaintance was that the weather can get a bit squirrelly in December, so external stuff has to go out earlier. The other shocker was that people with take their decorations down, sometimes, on Boxing Day. Gasp! Mind you, when they’ve been up six or seven weeks, they are beginning to lose their appeal.

In the UK in mid-November this year, I noticed a lot of people were already hauling out the decorations. I guess they’re following the lead of the shops, most of whom start Christmas in October. I did hear people say it was a way of cheering up folk as the nights draw in and the weather worsens, and that is understandable, and it leads us back to why Christmas is celebrated at all. The Christians hijacked many older mid-winter festivals which had been established exactly to mark the shortness of the day and the change to the days getting longer again. I still say that weeks ahead is too early, but the real reason for celebration in mid-December goes much further back than the upstart newcomer Christian festival.

Not quite how we do it, but you get the idea…

Because we have a toddler in the house, we’re not going to get away without at least some Christmas festivities. But we’ve decided to go educational and we’re having two sets of decorations. one for Christmas, coloured lights and all, and the other to celebrate the Solstice. The mid-winter tree has just white lights, and we’ve brought greenery into the house, all those lovely Pagan ideas about banishing the dark, and seeking the green shoots of renewal. I’d love a big Yule log, burning for a week, but I’m not sure the Fire Department would be too happy about that. Hopefully, though, young Charlie will grow up with an idea of why we do what we do in December, and not just see a big fellow in a red suit dishing our presents.