It’s the most wonderful time of year, isn’t it? Advent, I mean, not Christmas. The destination is fine, but the journey is what it’s really all about.
After all, on the big day itself, someone in the house will invariably have been taken down by flu or be snivelling in a snotty, tissue-littered corner. Guests will be stuck on the M25 with food getting cold and children becoming agitated. And my son will almost certainly be outraged that he doesn’t get every last present he has so far written on a very long Christmas list.
By contrast, during the next four weeks, there will be lots of festive music, a lovely tree to decorate, pleasant thoughts of impending annual leave and school hols, advent calendars and candles to enjoy, and perhaps even a pre-Crimbo party or two to attend. All in all, that wonderful sense of optimistic expectation will permeate, uplifting spirits and convincing everyone that this year, Christmas Day itself might go without a hitch. Ha!
However, I increasingly have an advent gripe, about lights.
When we first left the burning metropolis of London fifteen years ago, heading north into the sleepy Chilterns, the official Christmas lights in our town seemed a delightfully homespun affair. Each year, on the first Sunday of advent, they would be turned on by a local dignitary, a switch flicked following a half-hearted countdown from a crowd congregated around an almost bare Christmas tree and a burger van. The illumination consisted of a single row of coloured bulbs, looped along each side of the High Street and another shopping street at right angles to it.
On the face of it, they weren’t all that, and yet they were beautiful in their simplicity, twinkling their understated charm through the town till New Year’s Day. It’s true to say that they sometimes failed, and you’d have a stretch of darkness between the lights that were actually working. Still, they felt like a good fit.
Evidently, though, the regular outages were too much hassle for the local authority, and about seven years ago, the cute strings of colour were replaced almost in entirety by identikit installations attached to lampposts along a 300m stretch of the main road, each depicting a star that changes colour every 30 seconds or so. They aren’t completely hideous, but they are slightly too big for the street, and just too apparent – especially during daylight hours when the bulbs are not lit and the town is basically filled with bland plastic stars. The fact that the secondary shopping street has retained the old coloured lights just goes to emphasise the folly of the high street’s bombastic alternatives.
Maybe the only bright side of the current energy crisis is that the light pollution of crass Christmas displays will be dialled down this year
But that shift to bigger being better isn’t confined to a single road in leafy Berkhamsted. Verbose displays of Christmas lights now seem to be de rigueur in private homes, shopping centres, municipal squares and anywhere you care to look. I’m all for a twinkly string of LEDs around a tree in someone’s front garden, but a giant, menacing snowman, back-lit and tethered to a neighbour’s roof just seems a tad excessive.
In my parents’ village, there is one cul-de-sac that appears to have entered into some sort of cultish pact to create the gaudiest light display in East Anglia – and presumably to drain the southeast’s energy supply. Last year we went as pilgrims to this secular centre of Christmas and it is certainly remarkable in its lack of subtlety.
I appreciate only too well that all this whinging makes me sound both Scroogeish, and like a massive snob. It will come as no surprise that I also have a problem with chocolate in advent calendars, but that’s another story.
Maybe the only bright side of the current energy crisis is that the light pollution of crass Christmas displays will be dialled down this year. Then again, that’s hardly a kind Christmas thought, is it? Perhaps I need a little more light in my soul after all…
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