I've given this a lot of thought and I'm convinced we should move the date of Christmas so that it falls on 25th January. I know it's tampering with centuries of tradition but sometimes you have to do what's right and this would be the right thing for several reasons.
1. Christmas is too close to New Year. We have that long, frankly tedious, dead time between the two so that after enjoying a couple of days of Christmas we have to hang around for the rest of the week waiting to get New Year out of the way so we can get on with normal life. And you end up with those ridiculous work colleagues who disappear in mid-December and aren't seen again until the second week of January. Nothing gets done. Much better to space the two festivals out a bit.
2. Its much more likely to snow in January. Everyone always bangs on about a white Christmas but it hardly ever happens in December. Move it a month and it'll happen much more often. And everyone will go around beaming as a result.
3. Psychologically, we tend to think that once Christmas is over the winter is nearly done. Whereas in fact it's only just got started and still has the best part of three bone-chilling months to run. If we have Christmas later it will feel much more like mid-Winter and give us something to look forward to. With our current arrangement we pack all the winter celebrations in early - and then leave ourselves the most depressing months with no festivals to break them up.
Of course, to re-set our calendars for this new arrangement there would have to be one year where we either have no Christmas or two Christmases - but we shouldn't let that put us off. Overall, this is such a brilliantly simple idea I don't know why no one's had it before. It's a definite vote-winner for any of the political parties that picks this one up - they can have it for free.
Who's with me?
1. Christmas is too close to New Year. We have that long, frankly tedious, dead time between the two so that after enjoying a couple of days of Christmas we have to hang around for the rest of the week waiting to get New Year out of the way so we can get on with normal life. And you end up with those ridiculous work colleagues who disappear in mid-December and aren't seen again until the second week of January. Nothing gets done. Much better to space the two festivals out a bit.
2. Its much more likely to snow in January. Everyone always bangs on about a white Christmas but it hardly ever happens in December. Move it a month and it'll happen much more often. And everyone will go around beaming as a result.
3. Psychologically, we tend to think that once Christmas is over the winter is nearly done. Whereas in fact it's only just got started and still has the best part of three bone-chilling months to run. If we have Christmas later it will feel much more like mid-Winter and give us something to look forward to. With our current arrangement we pack all the winter celebrations in early - and then leave ourselves the most depressing months with no festivals to break them up.
Of course, to re-set our calendars for this new arrangement there would have to be one year where we either have no Christmas or two Christmases - but we shouldn't let that put us off. Overall, this is such a brilliantly simple idea I don't know why no one's had it before. It's a definite vote-winner for any of the political parties that picks this one up - they can have it for free.
Who's with me?
