Tight Christmas

People are being very dilatory about putting up their Christmas lights. Far from the extravagant enlightenments of recent years, the first fortnight of December remained just as dark as Nature has decreed.

I wondered if we might have gone right back to the Good Old Days of my childhood when the decorations went up on Christmas Eve, but some windows now have tastefully restrained displays. There is however still a marked lack of extravagant garden adornments or Santas on rooftops.

If nothing else, the rising price of electricity has brought about this parsimony. But it is not just lights. Tuesday’s World Tonight on Radio 4 brought a report from John Sudworth about the effect on Chinese industry of the decline in demand from Europe for their artificial Christmas trees. And even if we still like their baubles, we want them smaller & less ostentatious.

The prospects for the jobs of those who make them however are not as grim as that implies – the slack is being taken up by an increasing interest in celebrating Christmas among the Chinese themselves – not exactly widespread, but even a small proportion of such a large population adds up to a satisfyingly large number of working hours.