Happy Xmas Everyone!

Well, it's officially 17 days 15 hours and 2 minutes until Christmas Day, but who's counting!?

It seems to be a controversial time of year, primarily due to the “Credit Crunch” that is apparently looming over all our heads. It's a tough one this, as there seems to be constant debate over whether this crunch is actually affecting people to the extent that the media is implying. It is certainly undeniable that the number of people in employment has decreased due to redundancies recently, however all I seem to have witnessed is quite vast decreases in pricing within a number of different areas. Petrol, groceries, gas and electricity have all fallen in price, in fact quite dramatically so.

Taking into consideration that many large stores and shops have had seasonal sales much earlier than normal, and that these sales have been spread over a number of weeks as opposed to perhaps just one weekend, my question is... “ Is this credit crunch as bad as we are being led to believe?”

People in employment are still bringing home a regular income, which means people still have expendable money to play around with. So, if people are still bringing home the same amount of money as this time last year, and things are cheaper than this time last year how can we all be poorer!? I guess this is just something we will all be left to ponder about for a good while longer, whilst the media have nothing better to worry the population with.

Regardless of what we are being told by the press people are going to overspend this Christmas, and will always continue to do so. It's like an unsaid ritual..it will always be done. So this is probably why I find it quite amusing how whenever December is upon us we all seem to go into this mad spending frenzy buying our loved one Xmas gifts, stocking our cupboards up with luxuries that we would never normally buy at any other time of year and then panicking once January rolls around with how much we have all spent. I admit I am guilty of this as much as anyone else, but why do we do it to ourselves, we get 11 months notice every year! It's not like December arrives and we suddenly think “Oh my god, Christmas is here, how did we not know about this!?” Perhaps my new year resolution should be to prepare in advance and organise myself so that I don't get any December surprises!...then again..perhaps not haha.

Ah well, it adds to all the fun I guess!!!

Merry Christmas everyone!!