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Sorry to be so 'Scrooge-like' , but I’m glad the Christmas festive season is over. It may be February, but we were back on our feet after the New Year holiday and ’phones began ringing once again and emails returned to life.
It certainly makes for a happier life if we weren't so keen on holidays—that’s if we like ‘real-life’ better. I like ordinary days, days when there's no pressure to be festive and to live it up. I've nothing against enjoying myself, but I've never been any good at pleasure-seeking. It's stressful. The best pleasure arrives naturally. Even after Christmas, January doesn’t have a lot of ‘real life’ about it, because it’s the month for feeling ‘blue’. We even get, so it’s said, the most depressing day of the year – the third Monday in January – to look forward to, and all because it was invented by a public relations company!
The most depressing day is based on a bogus calculation to do with weather and abandoned new year’s resolutions. But the basic idea echoes with our stumbling out of festivities with a big letdown. It's the parched-out Christmas trees littering our streets. It's unwanted presents waiting to go to charity.
I can't believe I fall for it every year. It's the nostalgia, I suppose, that draws me to it. I like the twinkling street lights, the carols and mince pies. It's the material side of it that does me in. It's the consumerism of Christmas that creates the inevitable letdown.
It’s February, but the orgy of consumption of one sort or another still hits us; but none of it quite hitting the real thing – that Christmas thing we sometimes glimpse almost by accident. I was walking past a church when the carol, 'The Holly and the Ivy' drifted out into the night air. It really was ‘sweet singing in the choir. I wanted to grab the moment and bottle it for the rest of this year!
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