It's the final week of September and, with the grim solemnity of a 19th century prisoner being led out into the soft, lazy light of a grey morning knowing that a firing squad awaits them, so too are we now being forced to stare down the barrel of the ever more protracted build-up to Christmas.
Excitement. Be excited because Christmas is coming. Forget Halloween; forget the multitude of weeks that lie between you and the halcyon lands of festive lights and the chain-consumption of high-calorie roast meats; forget it all and be excited now, this instant. Sustain this fever-pitch of excitement, allow your body to thrum with the high-frequency thrill of anticipation for the next three months until Christmas day itself finally arrives, coming as little more than a relief that the wait is over.
While Christmas FM - the most beloved radio station in the land/ the cause of many retail worker's descent into insanity - at least waits until December to begin broadcasting, we now have a whole new slew of festive media to deal with.
True Christmas is a new channel which is dedicated entirely to showing Christmas movies, 24 hours a day. Launching today, the channel can be found on Freeview (62), Sky (185) and Virgin (424).
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So if you want to watch Christmas movies far, far too in advance of the event itself and profoundly annoy all those around you, you can begin watching now. If however this isn't the road you would like to go down, I would gather round those with whom you co-habit and, with a menacing glint in your eye, declare an embargo on anyone so much as flicking past such a prematurely festive channel. Let them know that should you even hear so much as one flutter of a sleigh bell in the air, catch wind of the word 'ho' from anything other than a rapper with antiquated and questionable gender attitudes or, catch sight of a scene replete with snow in anything other than a grim scandi-drama then there will be hell to pay.
