TOO SOON FOR YULE…?

It’s an early evening in November when I put my key into the front door of my dark and empty house and open the door only to discover that a small parcel from Amazon has been posted through the letter-box at some time during the day, and is now sitting full of hope and optimism upon the doormat.

Eagerly, I tear at the brown corrugated cardboard packaging to dicover the contents within and am delighted that, rather than being some nonsense that I’ve ordered as a Christmas present for someone else, the contents are actually for me, and are the CDs making up an audio-book of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” which I pre-ordered months ago and had all but forgotten about.

Now I could go into a long and protracted explanation here about why I still prefer the tangible object that is a CD over purchasing the more enigmatic, esoteric and abstract option of the “download” but I’m not going to. After all, it’s taken me a long, long time to accept that brevity might really be the source of wit, and I’m not going to let that precious nugget of wisdom escape from my grasp now that I’ve seized it.

“The precioussssss…..!”

But now I have a small dilemma. Is it still far too early to start listening to those CDs as I drive in to work the following morning? After all, despite the greatest efforts of the supermarkets to convince us otherwise, Christmas is still quite some time off and even they might just consider that it’s still a little too early to be cranking up the “Slade” yet.

So, the dilemma remains. Is it not really the time of year to be listening to a Christmas tale…? After all, because of the time delay between US first transmission dates and those programmes being sold to the rest of the world, and of course the endless reruns afterwards, we often get “Christmas themed” episodes of many of our favorite TV shows at all times of the year, and nobody seems to be all that bothered by that kind of festive cheer when the sun is baking down onto the barbecue in a normal summer month.

This year, of course, the term “summer” had to be applied rather loosely…

Then, of course, we also need to accept that, in those parts of the world that choose to celebrate Christmas, a great many of them end up celebrating it under blazing sunshine anyway, and the snowy, damp tradition of the winter equinox is really only a bit of Victorian tradition made fashionable by the likes of Mr Dickens himself.

There seems to be a very narrow window of opportunity to enjoy our seasonal treats. I once received a CD of “Goon Show” Christmas editions in my Christmas stocking and, because I was distracted for much of the day by other duties, didn’t get the chance to listen to it that day and afterwards it never really felt like the “right” time, and I suspect that there are an awful lot of similar gifts that ought really to be presented a couple of weeks in advance in order to get the full and most appropriate use from them.

Otherwise you just get into that knotty problem that I’ve touched upon before. That vague sense of the guests who don’t seem to realise that it’s time to leave, of that “Christmassy” film that’s still clogging up one of the screens in the multiplex whilst the cherry trees are coming into bud around the vast and empty car park.

Nope, the decision is made. I’m going to listen to it anyway, and Tom’s rich and fruity tones are going to be booming out of the speakers in the car as I drive through another rush hour, and I don’t care that it’s still not even the middle of November, because that’s what a rebel I am…

“Marley was dead…”