Christmas trees up already? The world has gone mad | Kelly Brown

It’s Christmas! Okay, maybe not. But in the absence of much else to celebrate some people have decided to go crazy and put their festive tree up.

‘No, no, no, no’ is my initial reaction to this madness. Christmas trees in homes next to the pumpkins we have just carved for Halloween? The world has gone bonkers.

And indeed it has, as we wrestle with the latest restrictions and measures being put in place to tackle the ongoing pandemic.

Those that know me are well aware of my ‘not before December’ policy towards Christmas.

But I’ll admit to dashing out to grab some Christmas presents at the weekend before ‘non essential’ shops in England closed their doors. It means that at least I made sure I have a few bits stashed away on behalf of the man in red.

After all, the toy shops may not be essential to some people but I think my daughter would strongly disagree.

I’ve also started thinking about what I can order online for people in case the shops do not reopen again in time for festive shopping or a backlog means presents will take weeks to arrive.

Obviously in many ways this may not be the most important things in the world but it is just one of the hundreds of small things which are impacting our everyday lives.

Halloween was a bit of a damp squib as the streets and streets of fantastically decorated houses attracting most of the local primary school’s children for trick or treating were missing.

Instead everyone hid inside and either held their own little family parties or just ignored the whole thing altogether. We certainly carved more pumpkins this year than we normally would have done.

And I’ve certainly left the decorations up for a few days longer than I would normally have done because there seems little point in rushing to take them down.

Which brings me back to Christmas and the prospect of substituting the Halloween ones for festive ones.

Shall I? Mmm, probably not just yet - but I suspect they may be appearing slightly earlier in December than they normally would this year.