Christmas is coming, not (yet)!
One of the hazards of being in public buildings with PA systems in late October or thereabouts is that you are transported into a weird world where Rudolph is pushing his red nose through a winter wonderland in which Slade wishes everyone a ‘merry Christmas’. Roy Wood’s dream has nearly come true, and it more or less is ‘Christmas every day’.
Right now I am waiting for a rather delayed plane in Edinburgh airport. And my mood is not helped by the Christmas music. Paul McCartney may be ‘simply having a wonderful Christmas time’, but I’m not, nor am I intending to for nearly two months. I hope I can find a corner in which the music cannot be heard. Now.
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October 31, 2012 at 8:31 pm
Thats why Airports have bars and duty free’s.
Unless your on medication…..
That didnt work out for someone recently!
November 1, 2012 at 7:39 pm
Ferdinand, don’t deny the spirit of Christmas! Whatever about your own musical tastes, just allow the real meaning of Christmas to enter: thankfulness, peace in your heart and goodwill to all men, even to those who wear the uniform of the airline, or whoever, that has caused your delay:). A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine.
November 1, 2012 at 7:51 pm
Heck, Don, I’m all for celebrating Christmas, and indeed I do so enthusiastically. But not in October!
November 1, 2012 at 8:06 pm
Bah humbug!
November 1, 2012 at 9:06 pm
October? Brown Thomas in Dublin has had Christmas decorations on display (on the top floor) since September. However, it is not possible to identify a single day of the year, much less a season, in which one may cross town on foot or on a bus or in a taxi without being assaulted by several conflicting forms of music (not to mention all the tunes and beeps blaring from mobile phones in highly inappropriate places, which is everywhere I am). It certainly wouldn’t have been allowed in Plato’s republic. Imagine the peace.
November 1, 2012 at 9:17 pm
Well, yes and no: ‘There remain then only the lyre and the harp for use in the city, and the shepherds in the country may have some kind of pipe…’ The scene is almost Bethlehemic, don’t you agree?
November 2, 2012 at 4:57 am
My self I think six weeks, from 10th of Nov. This should be the decent outer mark for general Christmas reminders. You might need to order stuff earlier so having a prod earlier might be handy.
I wonder does it work though, the marketing outside what people think is reasonable. Yes, they tee people off, but they and you will get over it so it’s not as if you won’t buy less because of it. And they might shake a bit more out of the tree.
November 2, 2012 at 7:41 am
It is generous to attribute conscious contrivance to the extended Christmas marketing part of the complaint, rather than the simpler explanation that it is the automatic consequence of an absence of alternative creative ideas for inspiring gratuitous consumption.
A real marketing genius would fill the vacuum by making November the main month in which to release a host of new products each prefixed with an “i” or import a specifically November-located European potlatch, dropping the pretended requirement of eventual consumption of goods, with focus instead on creating perceived need to acquire goods solely for the purpose of redistribution on some date in November.
This still leaves unaddressed the independent, gratuitous noise part of the complaint.
November 5, 2012 at 6:29 am
Ahhh, I doubt it. I’d say FvP doesn’t go anyplace with out an I-whatzit, so should have a full mobile entertainment kit with him at all times. He should have the Ride of the Valkyries or the march of the Hebrew Slaves( Beethoven if he really wants to think about music) there at the touch of a pinky and the sweep of an annular. All in all, I’d say he had a certain enjoyment in his ire.🙂
November 6, 2012 at 2:46 am
What? Doesn’t your iphone have noise-cancelling headphones? I’d complain…
November 6, 2012 at 9:42 pm
Nobody would hear you:)
November 17, 2012 at 1:58 am
This is one of the reasons I live in France. Actually, if you arrive back in the UK on the 24th Dec, it is quite nice to hear the same old songs that have been playing for the past 30 years!