As it's December now I'll personally now acknowledge the arrival of xmas but I do believe that the commercial organisations that appear to have been foisting it on us earlier and earlier each year (god that sounds very Daily Mail!) have desisted and things seem somewhat more subdued. However I did F-O for a couple of weeks in November so I might have missed the period that really gnaws at my brain.

Whadayareckon?

I reckon it's calmer. It's nice. I like Christmas when it doesn't give me a reason to get annoyed with it. 🙂

What, you mean where it belongs? Not round our way it hasn't 🙁

hadn't really thoguht about it much, but yeah, definitely less 'christmas' going on. mebbe its just st andrews, our (shite) lights were turned on yesterday i think, and i've not visited any big towns or cities recently (kirkcaldy doesn't count!). st andrews is a bit of a bubble usually though… anyway, i've not yet seen the coca-cola adverts with the lorries yet, so my xmas hasn't started…

Yeah, glad someone else noticed this, appears to be just right, its just starting on the tv and stuff.

Great stuff!

it's calmer but just you wait til the sales start

there will be ninja shop assistants dragging you out of your front door by you credit card

christmas = extravagant = people will try and save money

sales = bargainous = people will spend

I expect we'll start to see sales starting before christmas this year so they don't have to pay the merchandisers as much to work late christmas eve

Do you think its a result of the recession?

Whatever it is I like it 😀

all hail the recession!

yeh i gotta agree. bloody awesome too. whisky deals are just starting up in morrisons aswell.

happy days!

All seems a bit more relaxed this year I must say

But no doubt once we've all cooked fat Nigella's plumb duff and gorged on all the Christmas goodies the green cladded keep fit ninjas will be waiting for us on GMTV in January 😆

That cave that you've obviously been hiding in sounds very isolated and lovely… Personally I started raging at Christmas ads on the TV before the end of October. I think I just then tuned them out a bit.
What may be different this year is that individual advertisers have much less money to spunk on upping their frequency, so it may seem like a less relentless wall of Xmas noise…

Yes, loads better this year.
When I picked my eldest up from the school club they were all helping put the tree up. They said they had delayed it by a week this year.
Shops seemed subdued also over the weekend.
Well pleased when the mrs announced she was fed up & we should go home & shop online.

I heard Slade last week in the Arndale centre in Manchester and there are 3 houses on our estate with lights up already

and there are 3 houses on our estate with lights up already.

Pah, the estate I cycle through has had lights up for four weeks now.

Someone has already stolen their lifesize Santas head. Presumably holding it ransom and will be returned to them safe and sound when it's actually the Christmas season…

Wasn't it the same last year?

Nobody did any shopping until about a week before Christmas itself, then it was mental…

I was going to point out that the M&S christmas ads started a long time ago but then I realised complaining about seeing Noemie in her underwear was a ridiculous thing to do.

Lights when on round here last week, but they're not extravagant. Shops are noticeably restrained. Although they're selling Christmas stock, it's easy to ignore…

The lack of christmas decorations in shops and lights in the streets this year is disappointing, but then I love that stuff.

Last year (before the recession got this bad!) a John Lewis staff member told me they had been told the chain was on such tight margins that they might not get ANY christmas decorations for the shops at all in 2008, as a cost cutting measure. Already during the summer of 2008 all the ceiling banners advertising products had been stopped. The staff had been told if things were not cut back in these small ways, they would have to start laying off staff.

The decorations look nice in there this year but now I am very aware that low levels of decorations in any shop could mean big financial issues, in fact I am more aware of shop 'upkeep' all year round now, so I was not surprised when Borders went down as there were lots of signs of financial desperation in thier shops.