City center lights are being turned on by minor celebs, ninety per cent of adverts on TV seem to have jumped on the reworked pop song trend where acoustic guitar and sleigh bells are the soundtrack, who would have thought it worked so well (tonight I first saw Lidl's commercial featuring One Direction's Little Things with cringe-worthy lyrics that are completely irrelevant to Christmas in one of the many ad breaks during X Factor) whilst the iconic Coca Cola is gradually appearing more and more as the days get closer, there's hype (yes, hype) and excitement (yes, excitement) surrounding John Lewis' campaign with Lily Allen singing a Keane song whilst M&S premiere their ad on Wednesday featuring Helena Bonham Carter and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
I'm not really into winter, being cold, wet and always looking windswept just doesn't appeal to me so I guess the Christmas build up is a nice distraction from the doom and gloom, the lights brighten up the dark skies and mulled warm isn't just something to warm the hands, it seems to have an effect on the mind a lot more than wine at room temperature and I guess everybody is happier as December looms but it's the pressures of being happy that frustrate me. You must do this and do that even though you wouldn't normally do this or that in the rest of the year, you must eat cake with every meal, a mince pie for appetizer (ok, you don't need to do either of them but you can't turn down cake!) but the emphasises on spending is getting more and more, it has become expectant followed by disappointment after that pile of presents which took weeks and months to save up for, hours to wrap are in seconds in a pile in the corner of a room whilst the rest of Christmas Day is spent watching crap tv and prepare yourself for gorging on delicious food. And that is it. Over. Boxing Day is a waste of time then a week of waiting about until NYE arrives, another night where we have to pretend to be happy so much so that we are encouraged to drink copious amounts.
