Christmas is later this year

Is it my imagination or have companies cottoned on to the notion that selling Christmas in late August does nothing but turn punters off. Oh the battle betwen faux festive "jollity" and the good old fashioned hard-sell, eh? Thank goodness we're not in America where Christmas starts before Thanksgiving and just goes on and on and on... Bit like their election campaigns really. Christmas will always come, the Republicans will always win...zzzz.

Sadly, very little Christmas schlock on the radio either. I am being mildly ironic, though I have to admit that I'm rarely bored of hearing Slade track. One of the best songssc about the British working class ever - I kid you not, check out the lyric:

'Are you sure you've got the room to spare inside?"

I, like millions of ordinary Brits, grew up in a small terrace house in the scumburbs and getting more than about 10 people into your living room was and is quite a feat (thought we've had 30 in our tiny house!) The middle class, those who aren't in tiny city centre flats anyway, don't have this problem. I could write a small disseration on that track. Nice one, boys from the Black Country for basically summing up my feelings towards Christmas before about the age of 14. I'm also quite fond of "I Believe in Father Christmas" for its downbeat theme but ever so cheerful, uplifting, dare I say, tune. Jona Lewie's Stop The Cavalry too isn't bad (and wasn't even supposed to be an Xmas track, either) and of course the bawlsome "Walking in the Air" by that rather decent chap Aled Jones. I don't mind the singing, but its that little orchestral descending bit after the first verse which rarely fails to bring a tear to my cynic's glazzo.