Always Christmas and never winter: why we should resist the high street's attempts to start the festive season early

Council workers on rickety ladders are hanging high street decorations, the latest #aww seasonal advert are circulating social media, and a heaving display of self-satisfied mince pies stands in your local supermarket’s entrance.

Yet, your neighbour’s last box of fireworks is going off down the road, and you’ve still got to get around to throwing away that decaying pumpkin by your front door.

Once again, the Christmas season has spluttered into full, groaning action in November, smushed up ever closer with Halloween and Bonfire Night. Barely out of October and a litany of festive events marked the calendars, with shopping centres, markets, concerts and parties all scrapping for attention. Well, I say events, but let’s call them what they are: advertising campaigns, designed to draw out the crowds and their money.

“Whatever approach you decide to take, delighting your audience should be the most crucial aspect of your campaign,” reads one agency’s ‘How to plan your 2019 Christmas Marketing Campaign’ guide. I feel many things while I’m browsing the discounted swimwear in TK Maxx in October and Chris Rea pipes up. Delight is certainly not one of them.

A 90’s baby, I was screeched at by the broadband if I tried to call my friend while my mum was on the computer, and screeched at by my mum if I played Christmas songs on the computer before December 1st. As such, I was indoctrinated with the belief that the festive season begins in December, and not a day sooner.

Today, I’m neither an obsessive or a scrooge. To be honest, I’m mostly in it for the cheese and time off work. But I do get snarky when a Christmas song or advert or hysterical countdown from two streets away is forced on me before I’m ready.

The fact is, it’s just no fun to celebrate Christmas for ten weeks. The novelty wears off too soon; the glittery sheen gets scratched away.

But each year, the season encroaches just a little more on the Autumn months. In 2009, Manchester Christmas Markets arrived on November 18th. A decade passed, and they arrived ten days earlier this year. The Leeds Christmas Lights switch-on this year was just two nights after bonfire night, on November 7th. In central London, a Fortnum and Mason-branded Christmas tree already looms over commuters leaving Bank underground station.

The goal for events like these, of course, is to begin the Christmas shopping season in earnest. The selling frenzy isn’t just coming at us from the high street, but in more subtle ways. TV Channels Hallmark and Lifetime both now air 24/7 Christmas movies from October 25th—peppered, of course, with ad breaks.

You don’t have to look far to find an answer for why this is happening. The British retail sector is struggling, bordering on desperate. Even stores previously regarded as steadfast—Mothercare, BHS, Thomas Cook—are going under (Fly high, Woolworths, your pick-n-mix was terrific and you deserved better). And with 91 per cent of Brits celebrating Christmas, we are a vast, captive audience. Why not take advantage of people who are drunk on Bucks Fizz by midday?

Once upon a time, the retail sector had a ‘Golden Quarter’: October to December. “A large part of a retailer’s annual sales and profits occur in the three months before Christmas,” explains The Centre for Retail Research. However, ONS findings show that there is no longer any increase during this time, in spite of many retailers slashing prices.

In fact, The British Retail Consortium (BRC) labelled 2018 the worst Christmas for retailers in a decade, with ONS figures finding that combined November and December sales had increased by a measly 0.3 per cent. Over October, November and December last year, the number of goods sold actually dropped by 0.2 per cent.

It makes sense, then, that events designed to get us to spend our money—“look at our pretty lights! Oh, and remember you need to buy gloves!”—are moving earlier in the year.

We as consumers are responding, too. A 2018 survey found that 37 per cent of respondents said they’d do the majority of the Christmas shopping in November. Just 12 per cent said they’d leave it to the week before Christmas day. It’s not a coincidence, or free time, that is pulling us into shops and spending; most Christmas campaigns now start in November.

I want to say I’m resisting, but being truthful, I’m not. I have finished the vast majority of my shopping; drawn in by the lure of shorter queues and price-hike panic. Perhaps, if the retail sector can get itself back together again, we’ll revert back to our ways of old—get our Autumn back, and make Christmas a sliver of special again, not an overworked chunk. Christmas swallowed half of Winter long ago; it shouldn’t be allowed to chew up Autumn, too.