Bah, humbug!

I'm all for Christmas. Really - I am. JUST NOT IN FRICKING SEPTEMBER!! There's nothing wrong with getting excited about the festive season, just not while the cricket season is still in mid swing. I love Christmas as much as the next woman, but having it rammed it down my throat while I'm out sunbathing, trying to squeeze out the last dregs of summer, is not what I want. The constant spamming of my Facebook newsfeed with festive pictures and 'Only 89 days 'til Christmas!' countdowns really gets on my chuff. How, just how is it possible to keep up that level of enthusiasm for months on end? When it gets to December, by all means get a squeaky bum walking round town looking at the decorations and buying your gifts. But getting excited about putting your tree up in October? Nutty, totally nutty.

I'm not a total Grinch. I love the (short!!) build up to Christmas day; dragging the dusty decorations out the garage and seeing which are still in decent enough condition to use, spending 48 hours straight wrapping the kids' 8000 presents, anchoring the tree to the wall in twenty places to stop the cats from bringing it down, shouting at the cats to leave the bloody baubles alone and retrieving said baubles from under the settee each morning. My OCD starts to get in after a few days though, and by Boxing day I'm itching to take them all back down so I can dust the surfaces properly. See, I reckon that the longer you spend building up to Christmas, the bigger the drop you face when it's all over. That period between Christmas and new year is just no mans land, when you hate being back at work but it's too long a period to take as holiday because you seriously risk killing your partner or starting the new year by presenting them with divorce papers. And once you get into January, that's just nothing but misery; months of cold to look forward to, 5 weeks til payday and not so much as a bank holiday in sight.  Surely all this is just intensified when you've spent the last 4 months of the year emitting little "Squeea's" of excitement over Santa?

So, I'm placing a total embargo on Christmas talk until at least the middle of November. And not just for my benefit - it's to try and stop all of my friends sinking into deep depression once the festivities are all over. But in the meantime, if anyone knows where I can buy a cat resistant tree..?