Christmas Already!

As I passed through the supermarket today, I was not buying just annoying the security man, I noticed they had the Christmas chocolate boxes on display. Then as I passed the big shop on the corner a window was dressed up with a variety of maroon coloured Santas! I wanted to stand there shouting "HE DOESN'T EXIST AND IT'S STILL OCTOBER!!!" but didn't. No doubt the card shop opposite has begun displaying Christmas cards, but I didn't bother to look, and as I wandered through Tesco for cheap bread I saw they also were well ahead with the Christmas goodies lark. Now I am all in favour of planning ahead, but why can we not be like Denmark. If I am right they are not allowed to display Christmas goodies until late November or early December! Good for them if true!

This annoys me on many levels. Not only is it commercialising Christmas, which is at the wrong date anyway, but I was reminded by this display of the meaningless of life for so many. When the Beatles were producing music to change the world I was wondering why on earth do we live like we do? We leave school, get jobs, then get married and have kids who leave school. get jobs, and on and on and on. There was no point to this life! Life surely meant more than this. Now today I know for a fact that life is found in the person of Jesus Christ himself, and this does not go round in meaningless circles (although it could be clearer in many ways if you don't mind me saying so!). However the idea that each year we start with a New Year piss up, move on through Valentines Day (another rip off), a commercialised Easter (and what have eggs to do with it I ask you?), take part in the holiday season in the foreign sun or British rain, then prepare for Christmas! Worse still until recently Christmas day was full of adverts for summer holidays! Now they have to wait a day or two before they start this. What is this life if we are constantly looking to the next, all too often, non-event? It is one thing to go through the year looking forward to something, but in my sixties mind set something is amiss and this is nothing but a rat race. Who wins? The companies, and their employees, who set all this early commercial gain up lose out as they are stressed out for a handful of silver, the buyer is stressed out looking for the right gift, and worse if it turns out to be wrong! The nation is left suffering a hangover, not just of alcohol and the problems it brings, but the emptiness as the enticing season fails to live up to expectations. The season of 'goodwill?' No, just the season of stress.