Christmas comes but once a week

In the 2 December 1995 edition, Digby Anderson bemoans a Britain in which people just cannot postpone any pleasure: not crisps, not carols.

Christmas was and still is regarded as a time of feasting. Traditionally, however, the feasting started on 25 December and went on to 2 February, the feast of Candlemas. Now, the feasters just about last till after lunch on Boxing Day. When offered the most modest pre-dinner drinks on that evening, they haul up the white flag and holler, ‘Nuff.’ Christmas Day used to be the start of carol singing, Christmas carols that is; it was Advent carols that were sung before the 25th. Now the only singing you will hear after Christmas Day are those favourite refrains: ‘I’ll be glad when it’s all over’; ‘It will be good to get back to work’ and ‘I think it goes on too long, don’t you?’ It’s extraordinary. What these people want to get away from, apparently, are those pleasures of eating, drinking and self-indulgence with which the age is supposed to be obsessed.