I was watching my UK local news from last night when one of the items caught my attention. One of the fun things about local news - even though I now live some 1500 miles away, is that it keeps you in touch with what is going on at home and from time to time somebody you know might just turn up on screen. Anyway, enough preamble, what caught my attention was an item about this...

What do you see?

A lot of people said that to all intents and purposes it is Christmas Tree and to be honest I can see where they are coming from and this was the whole point of the story, hence my title. 

Back in the day, Christmas-related items used to appear in the shops at the beginning of December and steadily that has been encroached upon more and more as consumers are encouraged to buy - literally consume - more earlier and earlier each year. For a long time, in the UK, things started to appear a few days into November, once the whole Guy Fawkes' thing was done and dusted and for many years the convention has become to get Christmas things on the shelves as soon as the kids and the whole "Back to School" thing is done at the beginning of September. 

According to the seller it is an Autumn(al) tree and nothing to do with Christmas and superficially it does look the part, but to what end? It is just blatant commercialism with no tradition, narrative, or other purpose behind it. Especially, when in a few mere months many people will be adorning their homes with a Christmas tree that does have a sense of tradition, a narrative, and a purpose (presents are often put under the tree) and that should be enough.

Buy! Buy! Buy! We are told all the time and to paraphrase an old adage that perfectly sums it up, "We spend money we don't have on things we don't want or need [on people we don't really like].

And suckers that we are, we literally buy into it.

As always stay safe and well my friends.