With two months until Christmas, is it too soon to go into full-on festive mode? | Matt Mohan-Hickson

My washing up liquid is already wishing me a very Fairy Christmas, supermarket sandwiches have been given a festive makeover and in a cave somewhere Michael Buble is stirring, ready to wake from his 11 month hibernation.

It is only a matter of days before seasonal themed adverts begin to conquer TV – although thankfully this is easy to avoid in the age of streaming. Netflix, Amazon Prime and the likes have yet to find a way to insert adverts into their services between episodes, mercifully.

After these adverts are released in dribs and drabs, news sites will turn to social media to crown the giant corporation which has ‘won’ Christmas.

This will soon to be followed by the other great festive traditions – including rows over Kevin the Carrot stuffed toys at an Aldi somewhere in the UK before stories of children blowing their parents’ entire festive budget on FIFA packs will no doubt appear in the wild again.

In the words of Meredith Wilson, and repeated by a thousand cover singers: ‘It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.’

For all the Grinch-like undertones to the start of my column, I truly love this time of the year.

By the time I get to mid-October I feel myself being caught in the pull of the festive tractor beam and have to strongly fight the urge to throw on a Christmas film or fire up the holiday playlist.

But now that November is upon us I can’t help but feel my resistance waning, especially after a year as cursed as 2020 has been.

I just want to throw on one of my numerous Christmas jumpers, sip a chai latte and listen to the comforting sounds of Middlesbrough’s finest Chris Rea extolling Driving Home for Christmas.

However, I worry that going full festive before Bonfire Night is jumping the gun a little. I don’t want to overdose on Christmas before December has even started.

Yet here I am with my fingers eager to type the name of my favourite Christmas album – A Very Kacey Christmas for those who are interested – into Spotify.

With the threat of a long and miserable winter ahead of us, perhaps going full festive mode for two months might be needed more than ever.

The John Lewis advert is going to be insufferable isn’t it?

I have fond memories for many of the early John Lewis Christmas adverts, especially Monty the Penguin.

However as the years have gone on, it has begun to feel like the minds behind these festive clips are being crushed by the weight of expectations.

It is one of those inevitable things, like a popular sitcom or book series becoming stale and running out of ideas the longer it goes on.

The early magic has been lost – and the audience has become familiar with the formula.

In this case; take one cute child, animal or some combination of the two, pair it with a stripped back pop cover, add a heavy sprinkling of schmaltz and voila you’ve got a Christmas ad.

But throughout this year I’ve been dreading what John Lewis will cook up for 2020 – and how inevitably it will be painfully lockdown-themed.

I can just picture it now – a person feeling lonely, missing their friends, then they get a new laptop for Christmas and can zoom all the people they have missed, all while a cover of Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again plays in the background.

It is going to be so sugary; I can feel my teeth rotting already.

How lucky we are to live in this modern age

It might not seem like it given the bin-fire that is 2020, but we are all so lucky to be alive in this modern age.

I know this probably sounds an extremely random thing to say, given the rest of this week’s column is so Christmas-themed.

But I went on a trip to Salisbury and visited Old Sarum, which are the ruins of the original town.

Walking round the remains and reading the placards describing what life was like back then, I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude that I was not alive at that time.

What a miserable existence it must have been. Unless you were the king or a bishop or a high lord, but what are the odds of that?

Most likely I would have been the guard who had to stand by the entrance to the castle in all the elements, or the guy who had to go and clean out the toilet hole.

Instead I get to live in a heated home, watch movies on my mobile phone and spend my spare time pondering on the right time to listen to Christmas music.