Where did Christmas suddenly come from?

Christmas seems to have crept up on me suddenly. I don't think I was looking - and I don't have any any nippers running in from school on a mission to fulfill some Christmas project or try out the Christmas Concert speech every ten minutes.

If I'd opened my eyes for a second I'd have spotted that the local florist - a seasonal obsessive who put his Halloween window up in the middle of August - had littered the window with icicle lights the moment the Jack 'O Lantern burnt out.

I used to love every bit of Christmas, and still can't help trogging down to the card shop and blowing £50 quid on the most stylish bits of folding cardboard. My last Christmas indulgence. The cool dude Xmas card. I used to love all the Xmas ephemera - the municipal attempts at festive decoration, the Christmas specials on the telly, the drunk secretaries with tinsel headbands and no shoes picking fights on the high street. All part of the Christmas fun.

For some reason I've just not got with the program this year. Part of it I think comes from being skint. Filling the fridge with booze and expensive snap is just not going to happen and a couple of double whammies from the local traffic wardens have just wiped out the Christmas card funds.

I spose I can organise a stripped down no-nonsense Christmas by attending the odd festive footie fixture and copping hold of a TV times for the movies. That'll do for me - so long as 'It's A Wonderful Life' is on and a few choice black and whites.

Our lass manages to get right up till Christmas Eve without getting the least bit festive. Then about nine at night it's a mad dash to the local all-night beer-off and suddenly it's Instant Christmas!

But look at the telly and you've got to be out there blowing your hard earned on all sorts of crap! How you parent types cope with the toy onslaught is beyond me. When your average DVD / Vid Game / preprogrammed toy costs as much as a house, and the obligatory priceless footwear has got to be endorsed by some phat-arsed B-baller before they're fit to be worn in impolite company, it must be a dear do.

Mind you, not having kids seems to send some people into a Christmas decoration frenzy! First you fill the garden full of illuminated santas and animated gnomes that look like they were nicked from the Meadowhall mall grotto. Then of course you wrap every tree in the garden with fairy lights. Then you make up the living room with as many coloured bulbs as you can lay your hands on. It'll only be a matter of time before people start rigging out their cars with all this stuff. Or the pet dog.

Finally your social standing will entirely depend upon how many Hallmark cards you can pin up the chimney stack. My gran used to get literally hundreds of the things - all virtually identical and from strangers she met in the dinner queue at Butlins back in the seventies, or met down the chiropodists waiting room.

But it won't be long before the thought police come along and decide that to call it Christmas is offending some minority or other and we call the whole thing Winterval, and go round like the Yanks do, wishing all and sundry "Happy Holidays".

Our lass just walked up.

"What you writing about"

"Christmas"

"Bah humbug"

She has a point. I better stop until it's nearer time.

I don't believe it! (He says in fluent Victor Meldrew) there's bloody carol singers at the door!

"YOU'RE TOO EARLY!!!"

Blogga.