Now that it is officially the Christmas season, I thought I’d be the first to wish you a happy one.

No, I’m not off my rocker (in 3 months time – different story), but yesterday someone who clearly was made me scream internally.

Having a look at the various products I had for sale, she asks “Have you not got any Christmas things out yet?”.

Normally it is retailers who jump the gun on the seasons, especially the larger chain stores. Penneys, Debenhams, M&S and others started the Christmas creep before the schools went back. Nobody likes it and to be perfectly frank, any retailer that starts decking the halls with boughs of holly in August should be boycotted and have the holly stuck so far up their holes that they start sprouting it their ears.

When “punters” start asking about Christmas stock though, it really is a sad state of affairs. I’d love to ‘get inside the head’ of someone like that and just see how many screws they have loose. I really and truly cannot understand it.

I hate to start off a sentence “In my day” – but I will. In my day, Christmas started in December. That’s when we got the Advent calendar, when Blue Peter was the cue to make an Advent Crown from a couple of coat hangers and some tinsel. It was when we had Christmas exams and knew that when they were over, the festivities could begin in earnest. It was the Late Late Toy Show with simple toys and a presenter who knew how to do these things right. It was making Yuletide logs. It was the annual thrill of picking out a Christmas tree. It was genuinely a time of plenty,

I’ve asked my parents and they concur. They never felt pressurised into buying extravagant toys. We got whatever they could afford and we were as happy as could be. My brothers and sister feel the pressure at this time of year and, I guess, if I had a child I would feel the pressure too.

Quite obviously, it’s pressure that shouldn’t be there and it’s our own fault for letting things get this way. Consumers have incredible power, but only when enough stand together and say “Enough of this, we don’t want Christmas pushed in our faces in September..”.

It’s unlikely to happen and it’s something I wish would, because the day when someone asks “have you got any Christmas stuff out”, you just know there’s something very, very wrong.