Blog: A gloomy forecast for Christmas
- Published: 24 October 2008 08:27
- Author: Juliette Wills
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- Last Updated: 24 October 2008 08:40
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Can someone please tell supermarket managers that it's only October? The shops are filling up fast with Christmas cards and stupid candle gift sets already, and we haven't even got Hallowe'en out of the way yet.
There are still plenty of flammable fancy dress outfits to spend your hard earned cash on, perfect for dressing your kids in as long as you don't turn the fire on or let them anywhere near a gas cooker.
Mind you, with energy prices as they are, I don't suppose most of us would put the gas on. Still, I don't need to buy a fancy dress outfit as I already resemble a terrifying, snaggle-toothed hag at the end of most months these days.
The credit crunch – a turn of phrase which makes our troublesome times sound like a supermarket own-brand apple – is well and truly here to stay. Well, at least until Easter, but then all that stuff will be in the shops before Valentine's Day, and all that will be in the shops before Christmas, at this rate. I think you get my point.
While some women will have reluctantly waved goodbye to their weekly Eve Lom facial and West End blow-dry; I, at the other end of the economic and social scale am waving goodbye simply to decent standards of personal hygiene by making my own body scrub from broken monkey nuts, crisps and Angel Delight.
Retail forecasters, whom I presume are like weather forecasters only better dressed, tell us that Christmas spending is likely to be 20% down on last year. They suggest that people will hold off buying the latest plasma televisions which are bigger than their actual living room, and possibly make do with last year's measly 32" model instead. Imagine the horror! Last year's TV. It doesn't bear thinking about!
Perhaps this is someone's way (not God's, though - he didn't force anyone to take out loans they couldn't afford to pay back, nor tell the banks to gamble all our money on slot machines) of saying to the world, 'Idiots - stop buying stuff you don't need!'
I can remember being wet-myself-excited at having a new teddy bear for Christmas back in the '70s. That's 'a' new teddy bear, not 37 new teddy bears, an i-pod, a Wi-Fi and a mobile phone. In fact, I got a new teddy bear only last Christmas, and was still very excited (though not quite wet-myself-excited, thankfully).
When did it become clever to get into debt? There are parents who spend 100 times more than they earn to 'give the kids what they want', which is a bit weird, given that they're the parents and they're supposed to be able to say, 'Um, big fat no!' when kids use the word 'want'. I don't get it.
I've never spent more than I've had in my life, other than on a flat, and even now I resent every day the fact that I'm paying interest. Gah. So, this Christmas is no different from any other for people with common sense and brain matter.
I've asked my mum and dad for Topshop vouchers, the cat for a packet of strawberry Fruitellas, a vintage 1950s wiggle dress from my new husband via ebay and that's about it.
If, however, my husband's gift turns out to be an orange, some walnuts and a packet of playing cards in a sock, however, I won't complain. Why? Because I don't need anything, as long as I've got him?
Because Christmas is about giving, not receiving? Don't be daft. I won't complain because he's just spent some money he has (ie. not taken out a loan) to acquire - wait for it - a brand new telly! Ta da!
