The answer? A safe guess would be yes. It’s hard to believe that there is just over a month left to go until Christmas, even though supermarkets and many other shops have been selling Christmas decorations, cards etc since the beginning of September – a time many people would agree is far too early to even start thinking about Christmas.

Constantly being reminded that Christmas is coming deflates the excitement that usually surrounds the build-up to Christmas Day. We become accustomed to seeing decorations, Christmas trees and Christmas-related products from as early as September that it becomes easy to simply ignore them.

It can easily be argued that the reason behind the premature promotion for this holiday boils down to money, with stores aiming to profit as much as they can from it. It’s no secret that prices for things such as games consoles, televisions, mp3 players and other products increase significantly during the Christmas period but no sooner than it is over, the same item can be found for half-price.

The early reminders of Christmas Day are also bound to cause significant amounts of stress among many people, with time to even start thinking about it hard to find. For many people in our sixth form, it is something most of us don’t want to begin thinking about. The closer to Christmas it becomes the less time we have until our January exams, with finding the time to juggle sixth form, revision, work, social commitments, family commitments and Christmas seeming like an impossible task.

Therefore, seeing constant reminders everywhere you go that it is nearly Christmas is only going to increase stress levels and force us to push our association with Christmas to one side. Nobody is going to forget about Christmas Day so why the need to impose it? If anything it turns the whole ordeal into a chore - something we dread having to do.

So yes, we do know that it’s Christmas time. We were never going to forget. So is it completely inappropriate to suggest that we not be visually reminded until a more appropriate time?