‘Imagine if the world was full of happy Christmas people,’ says Pip Bensley.
She’s doing her bit to make that dream a reality, by kicking off her festive celebrations months early.
The mum-of-two put up her artificial Christmas tree in her home in Southampton on Sunday August 28.
It’s now fully decked out with baubles and a star on top.
But Pip’s festive decorations go beyond the tree. She plans to have her fairy lights on all day, every day, until the big day – electricity bills be damned.
‘It’s not crazy, it’s just early,’ Pip said.
‘The cost of the lights isn’t much compared to the happiness they give.’
Pip has been a Christmas super fan for decades, first putting her tree up early in the 1980s.
She and a friend used to split the duty of having a tree up all year, so Pip would put hers up on July 1 until January 6.
When she met her husband, she delayed festivities until October – ‘I thought he might not cope with a July Christmas tree’ – but now the couple are separated, Pip is able to get back into her summer tree practice.
One of her two daughters, Alex, 27, is responsible for the August date.
‘My eldest daughter’s birthday is August 19 – so when she was at primary school we started having her birthday party as the beginning of Christmas,’ Pip explained.
‘The parents would hate it because the kids would go home saying “why can’t we have our tree up, Alex has got hers up”.
‘So I wasn’t popular with the other parents with that.
‘And it’s settled to August bank holiday since then.’
Pip, a triple Chelsea gold medal winning floral designer who runs her own florist business, revealed that Christmas music started well before the tree went up.
‘That starts in July,’ she said. ‘I do flower arranging classes and often we’ll put some music on and very often it will be Christmas music in the middle of the year.
‘I really hate all this Bah-humbug about “you can’t do this, you can’t do that” – how is it harming anyone?
‘It’s happy, it’s Christmassy – why are people so grumpy about it?’
Pip would love to start having mince pies, too, but alas, they’re not yet on sale. She’s pleased, however, that Terry’s Chocolate Oranges are already on the shelves.
‘The big tins of Quality Street are around already – that’s not good news,’ she added. ‘I’m trying to resist.
‘My Christmas cards will go out soon.
‘And we have advent calendars from September. So we need five advent calendars to get through September, October, November, December and all the extra days.’
Are you an even bigger fan of Christmas than Pip? We want to hear all about it – email us at [email protected] to tell us more.
Source: Read Full Article
