Wait until next year

Somebody has decorated my desk at work. Well, they have attached a length of tinsel to my divider with a bulldog clip. 

It feels like an intrusion. I’m tempted to call up HR, pretend I’m a member of an obscure religious sect who is deeply offended by Christmas tat and to explain that only a swift compensation payout will resolve the matter. I’m not sure I’d get away with that though.

And I do appreciate the half-hearted nature of it. It is better than proper office decorations. As much as I can admire people who manage to get away with mucking about for hours with baubles and fairy lights on work time, it all still feels a little too much like Organised Fun, which is, of course, the worst kind of fun.

There’s a certain honesty in my bulldog-clipped tinsel. It suits me.

I pass through a shopping centre, one of the fancy, new ones. 

The Christmas tree isn’t a tree at all, more an intricate construction of scaffolding and lights. It dominates, not just through its size but by the way it multiplies itself throughout the space as it reflects off the various shiny surfaces that surround it. 

It doesn’t feel that festive though, more a totem to the commerce of Christmas, a place to worship the almighty coin, to pay your respects to finance. It is impressive, but more than a little unnerving. 

I don’t particularly feel like Christmas shopping. I keep walking. 

“The rebuilt and widened Watling Street is lined by slabs of dead mutton, but it leads to a spectacular view of St Paul’s. It points at the heart of the building, unguarded by any façade.”

Nairn’s London, Ian Nairn, 1966.

A group of children were singing carols as I got off the train tonight. Christmas on its way. 

Excluding the great railway terminals, train stations can by their very nature be transitory, impersonal, cold places, especially on a dark night. 

The singers transformed the platform, and as their voices carried they transformed the whole station. Their lovely singing was so moving because of the location. As corny as it sounds, it was a welcome home. 

On my walk home I saw that someone had strung baubles on one of the street’s trees. 

This seemed a far more understated decorative exercise than covering your home in lights. It felt far more civic too. 

There is sometimes something performative about the Christmas display outside a home. These things often get competitive too, a street full of light but lacking in real festivity. Who really wants to live opposite a nodding reindeer?

Yet decorating something shared by the whole street feels more in keeping with the occasion. It feels a tiny bit anarchic too. I look forward to tinsel on the street lamps, holly around the street signs.