Wine?  Marvellous.  At the moment I’m at the “keep your mistletoe and your Christmas time but hand over the bottles of wine” stage of Christmas and festivities.  Not because I’m a long lost relative of the Grinch or because I’m a ghost of Christmas past, I even had a festive sandwich from the Co Op yesterday, but because at a month and a half away from the “big day” I’m finding it hard to get excited for the 25th December on the 13th November.  After all, I find it hard to get excited about my own birthday a month before it’s due and that a day dedicated to me, myself and I (and my grandad who was also born on that day but we don’t really talk about that).

BUT a woman at work was wearing fucking tinsel in her hair today so I guess it’s “nearly Christmas” (or she’s mental).

Instagram is lit up with a hundred billion thousand “Christmas scented” candles being lit, with festive inducing names such as “One Christmas Morning” when truth be told my Christmas morning has never smelt like oranges and spices, more wrapping paper, vegetables and an already half empty bottle of Baileys as I try and pick off the seven hundreth layer of Sellotape from a impenetraple wrapped selection box from Aunty Ethel.

The blogging “gift guides” are in full swing and have been since the beginning of September. What to get your sister, your next door neighbour, your gran, the woman who works on the meat counter at Tesco guides put my personalised and carefully thought out gift ideas to shame. Mainly made up of products that said blogger has managed to blag using the #prrequest hashtag and quite possibly used to make up your actual gifts to family and friends…(Sister gets a shampoo set, next door neighbours gets a onesie, your gran gets some bath bombs and the woman behind the meat counter at Tesco winds up with a selection of hand creams) it’s something we’re all a little guilty of but let’s face it, gift guides are like babies, once you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.

Christmas parties and work “drinks” or trips to the Christmas markets are planned. “I know!” says one clever person with really original thoughts “Why don’t we be dead different this year and we’ll attempt to find the most novelty of novelty Christmas jumpers” – said everyone in the entire world and as such “Merry Christmas Ya Filthy Animal” jumpers sold more units than Zara did city bags. Even I bought one and looked like a twat.

Everyone begins to lose their shit over the showing of the Coca Cola advert on TV. Because APPARENTLY a lit up truck, some bells and “always Coca Cola” opens the floodgates to the the over spending by British public. Each year the advert seems to be shown earlier and as such we all begin panick buying Boots 3 for 2 gift sets and dashing to town for late night shopping. The way I see it, the earlier I start shopping the more I buy, so I’ll be the one using a 1pm Christmas Eve finish to make my purchases or I’ll be making BFFs with my postie thanks to Amazon Prime.

With two pay days to go before Christmas, it’s hard to get excited about spending the equivalent of a months rent on presents for people o hardly see when I still have bills to pay and then work out how I’m going to divide my reminding money between bills without being left sleeping in a fort made of Xbox boxes for over spoiled kids. Don’t even talk to me about spending crazy money on what is essentially a Sunday dinner but with a blander version of chicken and a dollop of cranberry jam.

Speaking of Crimbo dinner. The subject of where Christmas dinner will be consumed is already being broached by my family – to stay at home or break tradition and *gasp* go out for dinner? And with a new boyfriend in tow there’s the unapproachable discussion of where to spend the 25th because you don’t want to offend someone’s family members offer of sprouts and a cracker pulling. It’s almost stressful enough to put me off my pigs in blankets (almost).

When I allow my brain to register that it’s really NEARLY Christmas the 27 year old in me gives way to a 14 year old on school wind down mode. The days of taking on board games to play, “non uniform” days and waiting for the mega beast of a TV to be rolled into the classroom are long gone and in its place are offices where turnover and profit come before mince pies, holly and the childish but amazingly thrilling secret Santa.

Of course, I’ll no doubt give way to the clutching hands of Christmas, the opening bars of Mariah’s epically cheery song and cave under the overwhelming need to wrap every single thing in sparkly paper and use scissors to create curly pig tail type ribbons within the next couple of weeks but for now I’m trying to think rationally and not be “that” person with fairy lights round my window.