CHRISTMAS has come and gone, New Year is over in a flash, the Spanish have got Three Kings to come, but then it’s all quiet until Easter.
In reverse order, Easter is quite a biggie, what with parades and bunnies. It has a reasonable run-up in the form of the two preceding Sundays before the serious chocolate eating begins.
Three Kings is fun for the Spanish, but in general we haven’t really got into the swing of it, whereas New Year comes and goes so quickly that you’ve hardly got into the Happy New Year mode before it’s back to the grindstone – with your New Year’s resolution rejected in favour of ‘I’ll do that next year, I’m a bit busy at the moment.’
But Christmas reigns supreme! It begins here in November, (which is better than October in the UK) then builds into a crescendo on Christmas Eve, all in preparation for the next day – Christmas Day – which is the standard 24 hours in length.
I think that to a great extent the reason for this popularity is that we all celebrate them together on the same day.
Birthdays however, happen randomly!
So why don’t we elevate birthdays to Christmas status?
We could all get well and truly revved up, co-ordinate the cards, parties, presents, all to occur on the same day universally – it would be so much easier, plus birthdays would get real status, with real overblown commercial hype!
I think this is doable – and I’m suggesting April 1 as being a good date!
