christmas tree

While some, including my family, deem it too early to decorate for Christmas in November, my manager texted me before 8 a.m. on November 1st, pleading with me to 'eradicate' anything relating to Halloween and start putting up the festive decorations and the tree. I am a fan of Christmas; it's a season I adore, having had what my co-worker, A, called a 'borderline Victorian' experience of Christmas, growing up with a roaring fireplace where I roasted chestnuts, a tradition of new festive pyjamas on Christmas eve, a tree with ornaments older than my grandparents and a ritual of watching A Christmas Carol every Christmas Day after opening presents. Still, even I found November 1st was too early.

I walked into work and got sucker-punched by Christmas, nearly falling face-first into the Christmas tree. Candy cane ribbons decorated the tills, an arch covered with tinsel and stockings was near the entrance, and all the Christmas cards were out. We aren't licenced to play music, but it didn't need to be playing for Andy Williams' It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year to be heard internally - it was like walking into a Hallmark movie; I was half-expecting the cliché of a grumpy Christmas Tree farmer who looks vaguely like Chris Hemsworth to appear round the corner.

The front table was still covered with the Jane Austen display. A few days prior, we had new editions of all of Jane Austen's novels, so I took the opportunity to do a table display and pulled other Austen-associated books out. Still, there were other Christmas displays scattered around the shop. Despite it being significantly early, I wasn't disappointed by the decorations; it made me happy to see them out. The smell of tinsel made me nostalgic for Christmases from childhood, memories of sitting in front of the fireplace with my granddad, sharing salted cashews and cracking walnuts.

I chuckled as J asked me to help them carry the Christmas tree into the window. Thankfully, the tree was bare except for a few string lights, and it wasn't massively big, but it was still an awkward size and space for one person to move on their own. Dumping my coat and bag out the back, I returned and grabbed part of the tree, asking them jokingly why they didn't wait for me to arrive before they dragged all the Christmas stuff down the third floor down the stairs - very carefully - to the ground floor. It's a joke in the shop that J, once an idea enters their head, can only be stopped once the job is completed. Like me, they got the text from Jo about setting up for Christmas, and the blinkers went on, zeroing in on Mission Christmas Time and could not be deterred. J was well aware of this and took the teasing in good humour, laughing as we crammed the plastic tree covered in fake snow in the window, making sure it was centre, surrounded by the window painting we had done to advertise Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell, which thankfully featured snow as well, giving the display a festive, magical shimmer.

We stood just outside and looked at the tree, agreeing it looked nice. It wasn't drastically cold outside, so we didn't put our coats on, standing in our (non-Christmas) jumpers as we watched the lights flicker—red, yellow, blue, and green. The white and blue lights always felt too cold to be seasonal for Christmas, whereas the multicoloured ones felt warm and familiar. The classic rainbow lights made me feel even more nostalgic as memories of watching my grandfather decorate the bushes outside in the multicoloured lights flashed through my mind.