Do they know it’s not Christmas?

The last thing you want on a cold November day – when vitamin D is in short supply and the wind bites you with the ferocity of an XL Bully called Sweetie – is to have organised fun thrown in your face. Yet every year the huddled masses going about their days are confronted, when passing through gliding supermarket doors, by aisles drenched in tinsel, giant animatronic Santas and Michael Bublé wailing at you over the tannoy like you owe him money. It’s November, and yet Christmas hasn’t just arrived early – it has barged in, dumped its suitcases in the hall, and declared it lives here now.

Christmas, so the marketing goes, is the most wonderful time of the year. A festive duvet we collectively pull over our seasonal despair. But the magic comes from it being a December thing. A grand finale. A wintery crescendo to mark the birth of Christ, or at the very least to gather round the surviving members of the family to say, ‘We made it another year’. In November, we should still be pretending the heating definitely doesn’t need to be on yet, talking about the Blitz Spirit and gazing out at the drizzle. Instead, the haunting tones of Mariah Carey whisper in the wind. Germanic huts selling Glühwein appear menacingly across town squares nationwide. And, of course, the gifts start to pile up across every shop display. I don’t want to sound too Grinch-like, but the avarice never ends.

All this would all be overwhelming enough without Tesco deciding to launch its own little firework this week by labelling its trees ‘Evergreen Tree’. Cue the outrage. Woke nonsense! The war on Christmas! Grandpa Bertie didn’t fight the Germans for this! But the issue I have with it is that the trees are out so early. I have no problem working myself up over the degradation of the spirit of the season, but getting mad about woke Christmas is a December hobby – a prime opportunity to bond with the over-50s while they moan that all of their favourite curse words have been bleeped out of ‘Fairytale of New York’.

London has lit itself up like it’s trying to distract us from its own emotional instability. Entire streets twinkling prematurely, like a dumped girl on the rebound. As if to reassure us that London hasn’t become ‘Stab Vegas’. ‘I’m fine! I’m thriving! Look at my big, big, beautiful lights! Everyone see how pretty I am’, they all seem to say.

When you’re sad and going nowhere in autumn, the temptation to fling yourself into an early Christmas is strong, but this is exactly why November should be left to its misery. Leave it to be bleak, honest and still processing its life choices. Dragging Christmas into November doesn’t make it magical – it just makes it look chaotic and needy. November, sweetheart, be yourself. Everyone else is taken.

Carols and candy canes this early kills the novelty. Christmas should feel special – a sudden burst of sparkle at the end of a very questionable year. Except now, by the time it finally arrives, you’ve heard the songs, seen the lights, dodged the workplace tinsel and emotionally aged three years. Now here you are, standing in your local petrol station hearing ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ and wondering one thing: do they know it’s not?

Simone Hanna is a writer.