Christmas moment.

Every year I have a Christmas moment. It usually happens some time late in October, or early in November. I’ll walking down the street, watching television, listening to music or traveling somewhere and realise that, well, Christmas is coming. Each year, though, I think my Christmas moment is coming later and later (unlike the tat in shops which is on sale earlier and earlier – give it a decade and the plastic Christmas trees and tinsel will be on the shelves on the Bank Holiday after Easter).

Perhaps it’s just my age, perhaps I’m becoming more jaded, perhaps or perhaps. I even thought that this year it wouldn’t happen, that I’d be sitting on Christmas Eve wrapping presents, eating mince pies and watching The Muppet Christmas Carol and trying to work out what I’ll be doing the next day. It’s happened before.

Then, the other day, well alright, Mon-day, it finally happened. I’d just left Zack and Miri, thinking about visit Lakeland Plastics, looked up and saw these:

Xmas decorations, originally uploaded by saralparker.

Giant plastic 'paper' chains, some might say strewn, others dangling across the Liverpool One Shopping Centre. One of those visions you know subconsciously must be appearing at a hundred similar retail opportunities across the world, but even so look impossible. I had a Christmas moment and an overwhelming feeling of goodwill shot through me from my head to toe and I've been smiling ever since.