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A Christmas Monologue

I was almost sick when I saw the Christmas decorations down my parents' local.  Beginning of November it was.  Straight after Halloween.  It was a straight swap: goblin for Santa.  I'm not one of those - you know - those who drone on about things just to fill a silence.  I try to remain open-minded about modern Britain and its hankering for Christmas in early Autumn.  I don't even mind the commercialisation of it all.  If you want to blow your savings on crap, you might as well do it with good intentions.  It all funds the economy.  But it's the by product of a Christmas mindset in November that gets me.  People who wish you Merry Christmas before Advent are as dead to me as the people who take the tabloid's view as the gospel.  Like it was some sort of daily forty pence-a-hit scripture, with a brief respite from The Absolute Truth for a copaloadofthosedave on page 3, because Lucy, 23 is absolutely not a slut, even though her boyfriend sent in the picture she'd already had on Facebook and has become The Misogynists' Woman of the Day.  So yes, there are flaws in modern life, and I'm talking beyond the pair of tits in the paper.  And yes, I may be overreacting when I talk about the time of the year Christmas decorations should go on public display.  But my stance is this: you can do what you like in the privacy of your own home, but telling me it's almost Christmas at the beginning of November is a crime.  It's a crime of perspective.  To quantify the crime, it would lie somewhere between stealing a sweet from the Pic 'n' Mix and fly tipping an old sofa in your neighbour's garden.  And really I'm not even complaining, but there has to be an etiquette when it comes to Christmas, or else you'll just be celebrating the approach to something for a solid four months.  It's not Holocaust-wrong, but it's still wrong.  

I sit here in the comfort of my living room.  I can see through the front window the flashing of green fairy lights from the house across the road.  It's nothing too gaudy, and it's December, after all.  But if I squint hard enough, I'm sure the bulbs will merge into one as it reflects against the curtains, prophetic and Gatsby green.     

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