There are, I understand, solid religious reasons why the festive season is not over yet – even if it feels pretty over to me.
You may adhere to the tradition which holds that we remain in festive mode until Sunday, the Twelfth Night. Or you may be one of those who insist the counting doesn’t begin until Boxing Day, which makes the Twelfth Night Monday.
Me, I always find 12 nights a few too many. Just as the English carol The Twelve Days of Christmas can seem overlong to people with things to do and places to be (Seriously, we get the idea. Your true love sent you a lot of stuff) so our 12 days – and nights – may benefit in the real world from a little editing. Eight would be plenty.
Admit it. You can’t wait to get that 8ft tree off to recycling, sweep up the pine needles and reclaim your full complement of living space.
Ours has dominated our posh room for almost a month now and, save for its starring role on Christmas Day, has been granted just two daily visits: once to switch the fairy lights on and once to switch them off again.
There are four sets on it, as my electricity smart meter makes me painfully aware. Does it really have to stay up until Sunday?
Christmas trees take up huge amounts of space in living areas over the festive period
A second tree – an artificial one – was brought down from the attic to go in the room we actually live in and, to make way for it, clutter from there had to be displaced to clutter up the room I use as an office. Is it wrong to want my office back – to want Christmas to disappear back into the attic hatch it came from?
The issue, of course, is the real world extends the days of Christmas to many more than 12. The first trees go up in November. By then, the retail world is already several weeks into its build-up. Aisles are cleared to make room for festive stock, which means the items many of us are looking for are moved or not available at all.
Is it churlish to want our supermarkets back – at least for a few weeks before everything is moved again for Easter eggs?
If the reality of our predicament is that we have been on festive footing for a month or more by the time we hit New Year, it is little wonder some of us are led into temptation to imagine time off for good behaviour may be appropriate at the tail end.
We are, after all, at the beginning of a new calendar chapter. Many of us – though not I – will already be 48 hours-plus into the festivity killer of Dry January. Well, at least the booze aisles will be quieter.
Others’ thoughts will be turning to admin: the tax return form due at the end of the month; an early incursion on the 2025 holiday rota to secure those prime July dates ahead of the competition.
I am considering some home improvements and am anxious to hit the ground running. Having conceived the idea a week or so before Christmas, my plans remain shackled to the starting blocks. Either all the firms I have approached are too busy to entertain me or they have yet to navigate their way out of festive mode.
My impatience with this most sluggish period of the year will not find favour with everyone. Sure, there is much to be said for downtime and, even if the first few days of January often feel more like dead time, many appreciate the respite and space for reflection.
Not everyone wishes to charge into the new year like greyhounds out of traps. There is festive viewing to catch up on, family to see, chocs to munch, fridge contents still to plunder.
Indeed, some may hold that there is method to the Christian calendar’s maddeningly ponderous progress back to the old routine in the new year – that the festive season provides the enforced break before we scale winter’s icy summit in the months ahead.
Sadly, for reasons which have little to do with Christianity, we have turned this time of year into a summit in itself.
Navigating the extended over-indulgence without coming down with something is considered an achievement because, after a certain age, it really is one.
Project managing the whole affair – Christmas dinner, cards, presents, family visits, Hogmanay celebrations… all the while factoring in mobbed shops and the risk of empty shelves – is more stressful than most of our jobs.
I rather fancy a trip to a shop that isn’t in panic buying mode or over-run by new year sales bargain hunters.
A return to standard operating procedure, I think, is the tonic I need.
On January 2, as I sit here surrounded by the household upheaval the season brings, I am increasingly drawn to the sanctuary of normality. Therein lies my respite and space for reflection.
Now that I have expressed myself in writing, I feel prepared to convey similar thoughts to the lady of the household.
Unorthodox, I know, but what do you say we get rid of this junk? Spend an afternoon decluttering Christmas. I’ll deal with the real tree if you take apart the fake one.
A rubber band around the Christmas cards; furry Santa stockings off pegs and back in boxes.
My true love, it’s the ninth day of Christmas. Enough already.
LATE last year Claudia Winkleman admitted she almost turned the TV show Traitors down because the penury of spending three and a half weeks in Scotland seemed somewhat excessive for a successful presenter.
I trust her appreciation of our land has deepened three series in. And, in appreciation of her, let me say that while she may not have needed Traitors, Traitors certainly needs her.
If you don’t believe me, see how long you can stomach the American version, fronted by Alan Cumming in garish tartan, hamming up a preposterous Scottish baronial accent and peddling the fiction that he is the owner of Ardross Castle where the show is set.
Winkleman wisely lets the ingenious format take centre stage and intervenes sparingly – her glorious rebukes, for example, when the overthinking Faithfuls contrive to murder yet another one of their own.
If none of this makes sense to you yet, do treat yourselves.
And consider while you watch how often the best presenters turn out to be indispensable in their light entertainment berths.
Bruce Forsyth was The Generation Game. The Chase is Bradley Walsh but he certainly isn’t Blankety Blank. That was Terry Wogan.
Thank heaven Ken Bruce took PopMaster with him when he left Radio 2. A replacement would have felt like sacrilege.
I feel the same way already about Claudia. More so, since I suspect I know who’d readily replace her.
