"Fat to Fittie"

I keep mentioning the stress that comes with many aspects of Christmas and how this can effect both your mental and physical health. Another of those moments on the list are the festive decorations, a subject that splits not only households, but neighbourhoods, some love them, while the rest hate it. In the past I’ve been guilty of over doing the lights, I love the season and always will and am grateful that I now have grandchildren to do it all for. Some of my past displays have been a bit tacky and cheesy, but many have been fantastic, at least I thought so. Never quite sure how I found the time, but I felt it was important to do it for the kids, nothing beats the look on their little face as you switch them on, I was the original Clark Griswold.

one of the biggest issues is when to go for it. I hate with a passion the fact in the US, Mrs Christmas announces on the first November, that all she wants is me and its now time to put the tree up, F**k off, for a start, over here we have bonfire night to get out the way and call me old fashioned but it feels disrespectful to even think about Christmas until after remembrance on the 11th. We need to find our own day in the UK, that we can make official and do it using Noddy Holder, hearing him scream “iiittttsssss Cccrrristmassssss”! should be our signal to get cracking, from dragging down the artificial tree out of the loft for it’s 8th outing, to spending 2 days checking all the bulbs on the lights, yes I know we have LED now, but there some of us still hanging onto tradition. I know there’s nothing worse than being told when to start doing something, but some sort of rough gauge would take out all the debating over when is the right time. Officially it’s not actually Christmas till the 6th December, the feast of St Nicholas and the first day, as in the song is actually the 25th. I think sometime around the 21st November is a good idea, a month till the Winter solstice and close to Thanksgiving, the US want to spoil our annual celebration of treason and torture, lets shag up their celebration of corruption and massacre.

So now we have the date sorted, there is no way an agreement to how many lights is acceptable will ever happen. There are many, me included, who will just go that extra bit further to spread the cheer. if you’ve never watched Christmas Vacation, I suggest you do, along with the Muppets Christmas Carol, it’s up there as the top festive film. It tells the story of a man obsessed with giving his family the perfect Christmas, from cutting down their own tree, to overloading the electric grid when he turns on the light display. Many years ago when I was bringing up my two sons alone, we didn’t have loads of money, so I decided to go for a walk around the fields where we lived and look for a tree. Equipped with a saw, we trapsed around for about an hour, before coming across a fenced off compound. There were about three 20 foot trees all close to the metal perimeter and with the boys keeping a watch, I climbed up and cut off the top 6 feet from one of them. It looked lovely in our room, stood in a bucket of soil but in true Scooby Doo style, I would have got away with it, if it wasn’t for those pesky kids. Three months later while walking up a field with my sons and a friend, who was taking us to see his pond, a familiar sight became apparent, “Is that your compound”? I asked. “Yeah” he replied, “It’s where the pond is” Kids, you got to love em.