By Fiona Looney

Copyright evoke

It’s the beginning of October and in my local SuperValu, the tubs of Roses and Quality Street make for a paltry display, in modest towers less than two feet tall.

The end of the aisles have yet to be taken over by Advent calendars and selection boxes, and if you’re in the market for a red pillar candle, you’ll need to take your business elsewhere.

On the radio, aside from that ad for the Gaiety panto that seems to have been running since July, there has been no mention of the dreaded C word at all. To borrow from Bob Geldof, do they know it’s (three months to) Christmas time at all?

Just as the first call of the cuckoo heralds the arrival of spring, you can usually set your clock by the annual outcry over it being too early to talk about Christmas, usually recorded as soon as the kids go back to school. But this year, there’s been nothing.

I haven’t seen a single social media protest over the Christmas shop opening in Brown Thomas – in fact, I don’t even know if the Christmas shop is open in Brown Thomas – and I haven’t read any letters to the national newspapers lamenting that Christmas seems to start earlier every year.

Across my 40-year career in journalism, those letters, those howls of protest, have been an absolute mainstay of the media (to the point that, if I were to apply simple maths to those 40 years of complaints, it would conclude that Christmas must now start in March at the latest), but this year, nothing.

Is this the first time that it’s actually been too late to start giving out about people talking about Christmas too early?

There may be good reasons behind this neglect of the Christmas chestnut, at a time when actual chestnuts are already decaying on the ground. There is, after all, a lot going on.

Between the Ryder Cup afterglow, the exhaustion of a Presidential election campaign that has already peaked, the pending Budget and the unbelievably grim news cycle both at home and abroad, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to build a display of Lindt reindeer, let alone lose our collective reason over it.

When the Christmas lights are turned on in towns and cities across the country in, I suppose, a week or two, it is possible nobody will notice, let alone jam the switchboard to Liveline to complain. At this rate, Halloween might be almost upon us before anyone rolls their eyes about mince pies being on sale.

Dare I suggest we’re missing a trick here? That, in fact, it’s an outrage that we’re not outraged that it’s too early to be talking about Christmas?

Sometimes I think that this country works best when we share collective experiences and moods. The Traitors Ireland was a fantastic example of the Irish hive mind in action, with everyone – left, right and everywhere in between – agreeing that Paudie was a pet and the lads got their comeuppance in the end.

There have been others: fuming over the price of Oasis tickets was a collective, cathartic experience shared even by people who had no interest in attending the concerts.

A decade before, the cancelled Garth Brooks shows prompted a similar national outpouring of grief, even though most of us wouldn’t have considered crossing the road to see the country star live. Saipan might have divided the last generation – but at least we were all livid at the same time.

Communal grudges are a wonderful thing to behold. I always start my own Christmas countdown when I meet one of my neighbours outside SuperValu and she’s raging over the five selection boxes in her arms.

It’s academic that Christmas doesn’t actually start earlier every year – what is important is we all believe it does and are infuriated at the same time. That sense of collective indignation is a powerful unifying force, especially at a time when our little rock has rarely seemed so divided.

Sadly, not everyone believes in Santa for their whole lives. But believing that an outrage is perpetrated upon us every year by the retail industry and confectioners is something we should never have to grow out of.

So come on, all you Grinches and Scrooges, make your anger heard. Together, let’s prove that it’s never too late to start giving out about Christmas starting too early.