...there wasn't a sound except for occasional, irrational giggling.
As a certified Christmas nutcase the last two weeks of the year are, without a doubt, my favourite. I have too much childish joy for this season to concentrate it all into a single day. I finished work on Friday, which means that it is now officially Christmas as far as I'm concerned. That means an excess of eggnog lattes, snowflake earrings, mulled wine and Christmas radio.
But this year I feel like I must have got ahead of the season somehow. I know there are a large number of people that seem to take great pleasure in complaining about how early Christmas starts each year but surely they can't all have joined forces to delay it this year? Only in the last couple of days have I heard any adverts for Christmas radio and I've yet to catch a single festive drama. With only a week to go, surely that can't be right?
Fortunately I've a wealth of Christmas radio recorded from previous years so I have been wandering around in my own festive Radio 4 bubble, giggling wildly at old episodes of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue and Ladies of Letters.
I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue has a special place in my heart at Christmas. I think I was probably about 14 when I began to realise that my crazy, childish love of Christmas was changing. I was growing up and, although all the incredibly specific, detailed traditions would remain (and still do), I didn't take the same joy in just opening presents and running round eating far too much chocolate. I had to find my own definition of what Christmas was going to mean as I got older.
At that point I'd long ago realised that Radio 1 wasn't technically compulsory for teenagers and I'd found my spiritual home in Radio 4. For all that I looked forward to Christmas day as a whole, one of the most exciting prospects was a special Christmas day episode of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. We had a fantastic morning, with the requisite presents and chocolate and wonderful fun with my family but my clearest memory is going back up to my room for a lovely chilled out half-hour while I listened to a crazy and impossibly festive half hour. I don't remember what I was given that year, except for the giggles.
I'm not saying that radio is the most important part of Christmas. That's my family and always will be. But Christmas radio still plays a really, really important part in my festive preparations. The cheesy, the silly and the emotive. They're all there for me while I'm on my own preparing for that one great day with my family. They all add up to that crazy mix of emotions that form Christmas. They're the reason I can carry my festive spirit all bright and shining through the next two weeks. They're the reason I have the most epicly decorated bank of desks in the office and they accompany me as I decorate my 3.5 Christmas trees and bake eight batches of mince pies.
But I now find myself in an almost unprecedented situation at this point in December: I've almost exhausted my supply from previous years already. I've even listened to The National Theatre of Brent's "The Greatest Story Ever Told", something I normally save for Christmas-Eve-Eve. I'm holding back on last year's Marley Was Dead but that's about all I've got in the bank for this week.
So this is a desperate plea to Radio 4 and 4 Extra: It's time to bring the Christmas radio, like a Dickensian white Christmas snowfall.
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