During a particularly stagnant Maths lesson, the class doodler, who sat at the back and scribbled his education into the oblivion on the back of his exercise book, took things a little too far. Having filled his pages with a variety of cartoons, graffiti and scribbles, he found the time to colour in his Remembrance Day poppy using his TippEx marker to turn it a lurid shade of white. When the teacher spotted his artwork, his excuse for changing the poppy to white was he was “a pacifist.” Detention beckoned - shame on him.
We’re in to that final quarter of the year where we wearily turn on our television sets, crank up the car radios or flip open our papers only to find Christmas screaming back at us. More often than not, the message is to head in the direction of our local friendly retailers as soon as we can so we can part with our well-earned cash and make ourselves feel like we haven’t sinned against Yule. Come on, get on with it, it’s almost Christmas Eve, you slacker.
I remembered to take note of the first advert for Christmas. It was on my car radio on the morning of 23rd October. A full nine weeks before the big guy in red was due to do his work. I try to avoid getting angry in my car at all costs, but I now hate the furniture company who slung Christmas in my face a full 63 days too soon. Fair enough, sales this year on the High Street have been dismal, most of the blame squared at the equally awful summer we’ve had keeping everybody indoors. You can only sell so many sets of Ker-Plunk. Still, why should we be burgeoned with the fallout of their failing profits with another aggressive Christmas hard sale?
It’s the same complaint of excess and overkill each year, and yet it’s always confusing as to why the exact opposite happens for Remembrance Sunday. The papers make every effort to slip a poppy.jpeg in to their masthead as early as possible, and shame on those newsreaders that ‘forgot’ to wear their poppies – have they no respect for the dead?
I will not wear a poppy until the morning of Sunday, 11th November.
Am I being disrespectful? Am I ungrateful to the thousands of people who gave the ultimate sacrifice? Certainly not. I’m simply trying to remember the point of why we remember. For all those that tut-tut at those who don’t wear poppies in the days, or even weeks, running up to the big day itself, shame on you. For those who have ridiculously large poppies strapped on to your car, your opinions are respectfully noted. Just know that this Sunday is taking those two minutes to ensure that everybody across the land stops and considers, ensuring the same madness and needless loss of life need never happen again. It is what runs through your mind during those two minutes, not what runs through your lapel.
