Slowly but surely its happening, creeping into our lunch time catch ups with friends, taunting us in the supermarket by flaunting us their offers and the TV has been prodding and poking at this for months. Yep the run up to Christmas mania is firmly upon us. Shops have already started shouting to us that we need there fabulous offers, small children in our lives have been making lists since August and our bank cards are starting to attempt hibernation. As the ‘I want’ list from family and friends gets longer, our stress levels climb ever higher and time seems to be sprinting away at Olympic standard, is it time to (wo)man up and face the facts that Christmas is already coming?
Like many of us I try and stay in denial for as long as possible. I avoid the Coca Cola adverts on TV, the million Facebook updates that announce it is on there are enough to drive me to the edge (or at least to the vino) and the SKY adverts, scattered on the TV, radio and internet, that promise me a rubbish Christmas if I do not see ‘my favourite’ programmes in high definition, sorry HD. How do they even know I have a favourite programme?! Anything that features Jonny Depp is good enough for me. I do not need to see his facial pores up close and personal thank you very much. Even DFS jump on the Christmas band wagon, I mean who thinks ‘Christmas’.... Oh! I need a new sofa! Nope, never an association I have made either. Who cares if you can deliver me a sofa in time for the big day, I have presents to buy, food to make and travel plans to arrange. And why would I buy a brand new sofa (even if I had the money) for little ones to wipe Christmas chocolate hands prints all over it or drunken relatives to spill France’s best red all over it? Now, Mr DFS, is not the time for a spot of sofa shopping.
If you manage to avoid the onslaught of Christmas advertising until at least the 1st December, the one thing you can’t avoid at this time of year is the Christmas party invites. From September onwards in the invites start to roll in and so the social jigsaw begins. The game of ‘how many parties can I fit into 3 week’, as we all know, is not really that fun to play. It’s a game of snakes and ladders, of what you can physically do verses not wanting to offend anyone. Then there is the dreaded invite to your other half’s work party. The stuffy formal occasion, where you don’t know anyone and will expected to be looking picture perfect in Vivienne Westwood’s finest and towering Louboutin’s , whilst politely laughing at jokes you’re not involved in. It takes a certain amount of elegance and style to master the art of side stepping your partners drunken, leery colleagues whilst heading to the bathroom/bar. So once you have worked out the party line up conundrum, that of which is only equivalent to The Times crossword you may think a well deserved cup of Darjeeling, served with a selection of Primrose Bakery’s best, should be coming your way. But no! It is party dress season and so the battle of the bulge begins (again).
And what a battle against the bulge it becomes! With irresistible mince pies on the shelves before our summer ice cream has melted, Starbucks luring us in the with the red cups and M&S selling those yummy nibbly type things we never need, but want and then accidently end up eating the whole packet before November is out, there is no wonder squeezing ourselves into the little black dress becomes a mission!
The thing is despite the whinging and moaning, like most of us, I do love Christmas, very much. It’s just the build up that starts in August and seems to drag on until the dregs of the January sales are swept back into the stockrooms for next year that I dread. So as operation find the perfect party dress commences, the list making is in full flow and I have RSVP’d for England, I urgently require some thinspiration to enable me to get into the perfect dress (thank you AllSaints!) in time for Santa’s big night out. Luckily for me, the Boy has decided there is a ban on mince pies until we are ‘at least in December’ and for once this is something we are happily in agreement about!
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