Advent calendars are becoming offensively showy

Each year in the charity shop where I volunteer, the Christmas cards arrive in August; by September, they must be on the shelves. We’re a small shop and space is precious; shoes and bags which would make us a healthy profit are swept aside for half-hearted etchings of mardy robins. But at least it’s in aid of charity, and thus in keeping with the spirit of the season – even if Christmas is still almost a third of a year away.  

There’s a grim humour in the way the supermarkets can’t keep up with their own greed, arranging their differing seasonal wares so that even at the end of October, gummy sweets celebrating the forces of darkness jostle with chocolates celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace. But even more distasteful are the bastardisations of the advent calendar available to those with terminally shallow lives and more money than sense.