The Ever-Broadening Influence of Ebenezer Scrooge

In the Daily Telegraph this morning, buried in an out of the way corner where few but the most perceptive might find it, I discovered a somewhat unnerving article. Repairing to the website of the Daily Telegraph this evening to find the same article online, I was unable to locate it. However I did find its counterpart in the UK Daily Telegraph (since the article was about events in the UK anyway), in addition to a refreshing editorial by some chap I've never heard of before.

It seems we're stuck between the extremes of putting up Christmas decorations in mid-October (what the shopping centre where I work has done) or not putting them up at all. Me, I'm of two minds about the whole thing. A part of me loves the idea of Christmas as a public holiday (by which I mean one celebrated publicly)- one of the more enjoyable experiences of my life was strolling through the streets of London on Christmas 1999 and receiving several cheerful "Merry Christmas!"es from the few other folk who were also out and about that day. On the other hand, another part of me thinks it would not be such a bad thing for the Powers That Be to ban Christmas, because then the Christians might actually be free to celebrate it without the distractions of the Rush, endless nauseating advertising, and all the abominations of tackiness and kitsch that inevitably accompany it these days. More importantly, we might even be freed to observe Advent rather than have the feast forced on us while we should be preparing spiritually for it, then be prodded back to work the moment the real celebrations should just be beginning.