AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
Fancy tucking into turkey and mince pies for a summer holiday treat? I don’t, but that’s the way retail is going. If you want to start a lively conversation, ask when the earliest signs of Xmasitis – an infectious disease affecting your wallet – appeared. This year a friend spied festive boxes of biscuits on sale in a major supermarket chain in early September.
Yes, the Christmas creep is with us, resulting by October in ghoulish Hallow’een witches and spiders hanging out beside Santy and sparkling Christmas trees. It’s like a variation on that old election joke: shop early and shop often, instead of vote early and vote often.
There’s financial logic to the way retailers start the seasonal race so early. The Christmas spend is estimated to be about €5.4 billion this year and many retailers depend on the last quarter of the year to make their profits. Apparently, research shows that there is an advantage to being the first mover in the market, as this wins shopper preference. Marks & Spencer with Christmas food in September and Boots with advent calendars in August were among the early starters.
While I love celebrating Christmas, even down to wrestling with the fairy lights and hoping the cat doesn’t climb the tree again, there are more than a few things that worry me about the Christmas creep. It feels weird to see snow decorated window displays when the temperature has been hovering around 15 degrees and the trees are still in leaf. Surely it’s preferable to have things in season, year round daffodils, for instance would lose their Spring charm and the sparkling Christmas lights and feasts are appropriate for dark winter nights.
The endless food ads, with enough gourmet dishes on display to sink the Titanic, become unappetising after a while. With festive fare on sale for up to three months before December 25 how fresh are goodies like mince pies and Christmas cake going to be, will they have passed their best-by date. Isn’t all this urging for profligate spending tasteless too, when so many are struggling with the cost of living and a shameful number are homeless?
An Post, who will deliver over a million parcels this year. start preparing for the rush of one line shopping as early as June. In the midst of spending and commercialism, there will be inevitable reminders too not to lose sight of the true reason we celebrate what is meant to be a religious festival.
Christmas gets seriously underway once the lighted decorations go up in the streets and Santy arrives in mid-November. He is already ensconced in places like the Stephen’s Green and Jervis Street Centres in Dublin and An Post will open their Santa’s postal service from November 30 with a visit to Mr and Mrs Claus for young hopefuls in the GPO courtyard.
Santa will arrive at Kilkenny’s Yulefest on November 30, an event with a Christmas Market, updated lights every year and lots of fun for families which draws people from far and wide to enjoy the fest and Kilkenny’s attractive mix of independent shops and unique streetscape.
“Every year we say Christmas is getting earlier,” says Anne Barber, member of Kilkenny Chamber of Commerce whose gift shop Butterslip is in Rose Inn Street. ”It’s very important to get out there, some online offers come in very early and if you are not being seen you get forgotten. It’s such a condensed season you have to put your best foot forward.”
Anne makes the point that there are lots of valid reasons why an early start to Christmas suits.” People want to post presents abroad and then they like to get out and browse and get ideas.”
True but I hope we don’t get to the point of one family who kept the decorations and artificial Christmas tree up in their holiday home year round, only the presents got changed.
