Already In The Mood?

We have been writing Christmas cards and emails early this year. Certainly earlier than you might hear ‘Merry Christmas’ from your friends, but by far not as early as the appearance of chocolate Santa Clauses in the supermarkets. Or George Michael’s inevitable ‘Last Christmas’.

First of all, this had practical reasons. The cut-off times of Royal Mail for overseas letters. The fact that sending all those greetings earlier would mean having more time later for enjoying mulled wine and cookies.

But then we were thinking how Christmas looked like before we grew up. When did we start torturing our parents by practising carols on the recorder? When did we start demanding ‘Lebkuchen’? When did we started staring out of the window for signs of snow?

As a matter of fact, the Christmas season (at least in Germany) starts with the first ‘Advent’ (the first of 4 Sundays before Christmas), which means that when we were kids, the festive season always started at the end of November or beginning of December. Come to think of it, if we would try to forget about all the ugly commercial aspects and the overly bright Christmas decoration in some places, maybe it’s actually a good thing to start slow and early. It might actually be nicer and it might bring back sweet memories.. Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year!