Christmas is coming to a high street near you even though it’s nearly a third of a year away.
I was buying a gas canister for our new barbecue at the local Wyevale garden centre last week, and overheard a supervisor discussing where to put their Christmas decoration display.
That supervisor was, in all seriousness, wanting to move out some summer products to make way for fake Christmas trees and Christmas tinsel!
It was a hot summers day in the last week of August, and we were going to have a barbecue later on. Christmas was four months away!
I made a joke that it should be illegal to discuss Christmas on such a hot day, but was met with polite silence.
Quite by chance today, I managed to catch a snippet of the You and Yours programme on BBC Radio 4. It included an item on a similar theme – Christmas invading the high street so early in the year.
Apparently there is a group in Leeds called “The movement for the containment of Christmas” which is threatening newsagents and even charity shops, that they will gum up shop locks with Super Glue unless they remove Christmas items from their shelves and don’t display these items until 1st November.
One charity shop in Leeds has already had its’ lock Super Glued and the Police are tracking this group down.
Action like this is obviously going far too far and should not be tolerated, however perhaps the sentiment behind this action has some merit.
Christmas is a great time of year, and is highly important to struggling retailers, but please lets leave Christmas to the end of the year, not just past the middle of it.