Dear LPG, 

I am writing this message in the hope that LPG will print it in about a year’s time.

One day which my wife would consider a few days before the big day, in late November last year, I was out Christmas shopping, or should I say providing the money and doing the carrying while my lady wife was doing the buying.  I think I must have been a bit bored because I was actually listening to the background music that the shop was playing while waiting to find out what her next purchase was going to be when a 45-year-old Christmas classic song started to play.

The song was ‘I wish it could be Christmas every day’ by Roy wood and Wizard, but it got me thinking about what a nightmare it would be if it were really Christmas every day.  I would be out all hours of the day and night following my wife around the shops while being stressed out by her discussions and decisions about what to buy each member of the family.  Father Christmas would be hard pressed to keep up the pace of delivering presents every Christmas eve of the year and when would he get any rest?

In the meantime the shops would not have the extra profit to look forward to and sales would become a thing of the past.  The few shop workers who are left after all the automatic tills that have been installed in the bigger ones would be run off their feet.  On the bright side we would spend every night of the year watching all those films that have happy endings (unless they don’t impress you).  We would never stop eating and get even fatter (if we could afford to) and we would always be trying to get over the financial stress of the holiday.

For us pensioners I suppose it would not really make a lot of difference because we are the ones who have all the time in the world to Christmas shop but I know that my legs would give out more quickly while present opening would become as laborious a job as wrapping all that stuff in the first place. 

And, as a Christian I have to say that from, where I am standing, the pre-Christmas rush leaves little enough time for remembering what the whole thing is supposed to be about, and the whole reason for the celebration in the first place.

So in all I think that I am going to disagree with Roy Wood on this occasion as I quite enjoy the Christmas holiday but once a year is quite enough!

Isn’t it funny what goes through your head when you are not having that much fun?

SC, New Cross

LPG would like to be the first to remind you of both the holiday and the Christmas Classic that provoked SC to share his thoughts with us today. 

(►►►)