Opinion

Anita Robinson: We hurtle through the year, addicted to serial celebration

Halloween in Derry is now a civic event on a par with Mardi Gras. Picture by Margaret McLaughlin
Halloween in Derry is now a civic event on a par with Mardi Gras. Picture by Margaret McLaughlin Halloween in Derry is now a civic event on a par with Mardi Gras. Picture by Margaret McLaughlin

ELEVEN days ago I was travelling at a snail's pace along a main thoroughfare in Derry - the usual traffic snarl-ups I supposed.

But no, a couple of cherry-pickers were erecting Christmas-themed decorative arches across the street and the Craigavon Bridge lamp-posts were already wrapped in fairylights.

The date? Friday 11th October - 20 days before Halloween and a mere 74 before Christmas.

It was not the first unhappy augury of the pace at which we live our lives now.

Trundling my trolley round a local supermarket on September 27, in the cakes aisles I found Christmas mince pies in a festive red carton featuring a reindeer in a snowglobe.

"This is a bit previous," I thought.

"Oh aye," said a passing member of staff. "We've had them in for a coupla weeks."

I picked up a box. Stamped on its side was 'Best before October 14'

I opened a local paper on August 28 to find a half-page hotel advertisement urging, 'Book your staff Christmas party now.'

On the same date, Selfridges in London opened its Christmas shop. Easter eggs in January, the next Glastonbury festival booked out a week after the last one finished and a taxi driver whose Nordic cruise is paid for 12 months in advance - we're all living ahead of ourselves.

Somebody wise once said, "a thing looked forward to for too long is nearly always a disappointment."

Weary with anticipation, our chances of being 'surprised by joy' are much reduced.

Currently Derry's awash with Halloweenery. It's become our annual spooktacular.

You can't move for pumpkins, broomsticks, cobwebs, ghouls, blood-spattered vampires and small children with painted faces.

Come November 1, it'll be transformed overnight with the scarlet and green of plastic berried holly, spray-on snow and people driving round in the dark to admire suburban semis twinkling with elaborate displays of outdoor fairylights - a phenomenon that has spread like a virus.

We've become addicted to serial celebration. Barely a week goes by in Derry without a festival and fresh 'traditions' are being forged, driven by the retail imperative that feeds our craving for novelty.

Once, Halloween meant an old coat or a sheet with eyeholes cut in it and a cheap cardboard mask, going round the doors shouting "Any nuts or apples?" and a few bangers let off in somebody's backyard.

Now it's a professionally produced civic event on a par with Mardi Gras (save for the weather) that attracts thousands.

Nearly every religious element of our two major feasts has been obliterated by secular Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

The Advent calendar is reduced to a ticking off of the number of sleeps until Santa comes and a daily chocolate treat.

Eggs, bunnies and Spring lambs have replaced the Resurrection as signs of new life.

Church attendance is optional; "We go for the carols and the choir."

Not for our little ones to visit the Christmas crib where a pink-as-plaster baby Jesus lies asleep in the hay.

As a post-war child born into an age of rationing, it's recorded in family lore that on my first visit aged four, I remarked, "Aww - look at the poor wee baby. No clothes and no coupons to buy clothes..."

Not a decoration went up in our house until the day before Christmas Eve and were taken down on January 6, the feast of the Epiphany.

The living tree was dressed in fragile spun-glass baubles, strung with ancient lethal fairylights, festooned with hairy tinsel and topped with a skelly-eyed angel.

Every year exactly the same until, fed up with hoovering fallen pine needles, my mother bought an artificial one which lasted all her Christmases and half of mine, its accessories remaining unchanged.

Indelible memories, imprinted by years of repetition. Now, fashion decrees the tree be a colour-themed style statement of Fabergé fabulousness.

Today we hurtle through the year galvanised by the thought that we haven't done enough, bought enough, living our lives on 'fast forward'.

The sanctimonious may say, "the prudent are always prepared."

They're the kind who are out on Boxing Day morning buying the next Christmas.

To them I say, " Bah, humbug."