James Proclaims!

December is just over a week away and while the beginning of the twelfth month of the Gregorian calendar is not, in and of itself, the beginning of Christmas, it is often the beginning of the countdown to Christmas.

In a domestic sense anyway.

Obviously commercial enterprises have been counting down to Christmas since last Christmas and explicitly so since around August if my local supermarket is anything to go by. Indeed most shops are in a full and unabashed Christmas countdown from the beginning of November, and have long since decked the halls of their establishments.

I don’t tend to allow Christmas decorations up in Proclaims Towers until much closer to the big day. Usually not until schools have broken up, and this is largely because I work in a school, so I try to refrain from going fully into Christmas mode until I don’t have to think about work anymore. But I know many households like to put up the fake plastic tree from the 1st December onwards and I’m ok with that. I’m less comfortable with my neighbours who have been fully into the festive fandangles since Halloween. I don’t mind it in the shops but it seems far too early for the home.

There are some things Christmassy that start for me when December rolls into town though. I will start wearing a Christmas themed tie for work. I own three of them and will alternate between them for the final few weeks of term. I am generally quite an easy-going teacher for the most part so a Christmas tie suits my work persona, but I’ve never been a pushover and am more than capable of reading the riot act to an insolent teenager with dancing snowmen adorning my neck.

I’ve always enjoyed a chocolate advent calendar and so that tradition also begins with the arrival of December. Obviously my daughters have their calendars too, but I’m mainly interested in mine. I had a beer advent calendar one year, but that seemed a little OTT on reflection. The chocolate one is essential though.

December will also bring my Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films to this blog, and that has been a Christmas tradition since 2017. Indeed some years (including this year) it makes up a significant proportion of the output on James Proclaims, so I’m pretty reliant on it for content, but my commitment to it extends beyond generating material for a blog. I am obsessed with finding Christmas scenes in movies all year round, and my little December 24-day folly allows me to scratch that itch on an annual basis and vaguely maintain a functional relationship with normal people the rest of the time.

I think of my annual film advent calendar as a Christmas tradition but is something that has only been part of my life for 8 years really a tradition? I suppose it depends on how one defines ‘tradition’. To me it’s more of a tradition than the ‘Elf on the Shelf’ though, which is marketed quite explicitly as ‘A Christmas Tradition’.

I was fairly ignorant of shelved elves until a colleague bought one for me, because she thought Little Proclaims would enjoy it. She wasn’t wrong and the Proclaims family have been ‘Elf on Shelfers’ for the last four years. More or less.

I hate it. And I resent the colleague who introduced the stupid thing into my life. If you’re familiar with the ‘tradition’, you’ll be aware that the eponymous elf doesn’t just sit on a shelf. I’d be ok with that. No, you have to move the bloody thing to a different place every day for 24 days. And it’s hard to remember to do that, so sometimes you forget. And your children notice when you forget, and ask awkward questions. Because the elf is supposed to be magical and reporting back to Santa every night so why would it be in the same place?

Why Daddy?

Why would it be in the same place?

Because Daddy was tired. And also, we live in a small terraced house in Reading. There aren’t 24 places for a bloody elf to sit in a small terraced house in Reading , so even when Daddy remembers, he can’t always think of somewhere new for the elf to go.

But Daddy has to try. Because it’s a Christmas tradition. Just like it is in so many households all over the world.

Except I don’t remember there being an elf on any shelves when I was a kid. And my dad liked putting up shelves, it was almost a hobby, so there were ample places for an elf to find refuge in my childhood home. But no elf ever graced the multitude of shelves in that abode. Why didn’t my parents ever embrace the ‘Elf on the Shelf’?

Because it’s only been a thing since 2005. So it’s hardly a worldwide tradition at all. And if I’d known that when my colleague gifted me this annual torment, it would have been an elf in the bin on day one.

Instead of which, I had to go up into the loft today to locate our elf and make sure he’s ready for his little adventure to begin next week. And to avoid the awkward questions that have arisen in the past, I’m currently working on a spreadsheet of all the feasible places an elf could potentially spend each day, so I don’t have to come up with a new location on the spur of the moment, when I’m too exhausted to think.

Little Proclaims is 7. She still claims to believe in Santa etc. and I’m not inclined to curtail the wonder of her childhood just yet, but she’s getting to the age when her peers will soon disabuse her of all the fantasies of youth. She’s not stupid though and she’ll claim to believe in anything that will facilitate the acquisition of presents. She’ll also keep pretending to believe as long as her sister believes and, at 3 years old, Mini Proclaims is really only beginning her love affair with Christmas.

So the bloody elf will probably be a thing for a few more years yet.

Hopefully the spreadsheet will endure for as long.