One of the “features” of recent Christmases have always been the fact that they seem to start earlier and earlier in the stores. Shops are fully stocked, and set aside a large part of their shelf space to sell Christmas goods in November and often in October.

But now a new trend is developing. Christmas is finishing earlier and earlier. It’s been quite a surprise to see that more and more stores are removing their Christmas goods from their shelves. Instead of seeing mounds of Christmas goods including Christmas trees and decorations right up to Christmas Eve they’ve all gone!

As early as the 16th of December shops were clearing away their Christmas stock and Santa grottos and bringing back their normal displays. A few baubles and bits of glitter have been consigned to a shelf or two somewhere in the bottom end of stores.

This is strange really because if past experience is anything to go by people tend to leave their shopping to the last week of Christmas. There’ll be a lot of disappointed people this year.

Another strange quirk that’s appeared in connection with Christmas appears to be the availability of a choice of Christmas card. Gone are the shelf upon shelf of boxes of Christmas card selections.Additionally the boxes of cards have previously consisted of a very nice and “all different” selection, but not any more.

Cards available this year appear to have been restricted to a few packs of six or so cards where the design of each card is the same for the whole pack. No more festive scenes of people sledging down snow covered hills or carol singers gathered around a fiery brazier roasting chestnuts. All gone. Now it’s mainly abstract designs which appear to have very little to do with Christmas or with any other festive occasion in fact.

Such a shame really. I’m just waiting for stores next year to say that “Christmas sales have been very disappointing”. Well, they’ll only have themselves to blame.