Dear Dáithí: Can we get over Halloween before Christmas begins?

'Instead of heralding in the autumn and embracing the season, some people are intent on trying to bring Christmas forward about two months.'

DEAR Dáithí,

There’s something about this time of year that I love. I know lots of people hate when the days get shorter and the evenings get cooler, but not me.

I relish the days of putting on the slow cooker and having slow evenings with a book and a blanket on the couch.

With the pumpkins in the shops, I’ll be stocking up over the next few weeks and will carve pumpkins ahead of Halloween and make plenty of soups and risottos with the pumpkin flesh.

What is really bothering me, though, is the fact that instead of heralding in the autumn and embracing the season, some people are intent on trying to bring Christmas forward about two months.

A recent trip to my local shop was like a festive horror scene. Shiny baubles and velvet bows lined in rows across from skeletons and fake blood.

Once we reach autumn, it feels like we are being rushed into the middle of winter — and I’ve had enough of it. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way and yet, each year, Christmas seems to arrive earlier and earlier.

When I’ve said it to friends, they’ve reminded me that I can just ignore the decorations on sale and I don’t need to book Christmas outings if I don’t want to.

They say some people just like to get organised early. I get that... but I would also like not to see barmbracks alongside Christmas cakes.

My question is: How do we put a stop to it? Can we collectively try to ensure Christmas preparation doesn’t start until Halloween is over so people can enjoy this time of year without feeling they are being rushed through the months?

I AM TOTALLY with you on this one. It drives me cracked when I see the Christmas sweets and all that in the shops at the end of summer, in a small corner at first and then, a week or two later, out the front of the store.

Now the shops are very clever, and you would see a lot of things going at a good price at this early time, and if you can get over the fact that it is still warm out there and if you need to save a few bob, then stock up. 

In the shops’ defence, they are only trying to make money. It is really up to us, the public, to do something about it but I’m not sure what we can do. They are giving the people what they want — and this is what they want.

I know you, me, and others don’t see it that way but that’s the cycle we are in.

For example, the second New Year’s Day is gone, we are straight on to Valentine’s Day, then St Patrick’s Day, and Easter is then landed upon us and on it goes, running a few months ahead of time in a circle. It seems sometimes that we are wishing time away — or is it being wished away for us? No wonder we say all the time that time is flying by.

This might be my favourite time of year, just before the clocks go back. I know loads of people who hate the clocks going back but I love it. I love it equally when they go forward too in spring. 

It’s a time of year when we should slow down, and I think our bodies need it, so when shops and ads are propelling us forward, I’m not so sure our bodies want that all the time.

Getting back to your question about what we can do collectively. Nothing, is the simple answer. But we can do it for ourselves on an individual basis. It’s the only power we have in this one. We can’t control the radio ads or the TV ones; they have started already.

All we can do is ignore them as best we can and tune in properly sometime in December. There is a shopping mall close to where my wife is from in New Jersey and there is a Christmas shop in there — and it’s open all year round. The crazy thing is I’ve seen the place packed in July and, yes, there were Christmas songs playing.

One of the great things about Halloween is that it originally started here in Ireland and it’s only in recent years that we started celebrating it. It went off to America a few hundred years ago as one thing and came back as another.

That said, it’s a great time of year for both kids and adults and, again, it’s up to us adults to slow the rush down and make Halloween a great time for us all. 

There are plenty of things to see and do, and we just need to focus on that, and that itself will put Christmas on the back foot for a while.

When we were young, Christmas started on December 8. We had two great weeks of excitement and fun and, to be honest, even with that length of time, it was time to move on. I think the longer the build-up to Christmas, the more diluted it becomes. 

By the time Christmas comes now, I’m kinda tired of the whole thing and it really shouldn’t be like that. Christmas is there to be enjoyed but it does feel sometimes that, when we’re just beginning to enjoy it, the next thing is landed on us to move on. Going from pillar to post on a constant cycle is wearing people out, and I’m one of them.

The only way we can slow all of this down is by changing our focus to what we want — and that is to enjoy each month and season at a time and in time.

So put Christmas out of your head and, for the next week, check out all the things that are happening for Halloween and go do some of them. Eat your barmbrack and don’t even look at another type of cake for a month or two.

As the clocks go back, enjoy it in front of a nice fire, all in the knowledge that Christmas is another bit away.

Sometimes we forget that we all, as individuals, can change things on our own for our own benefit.