A British man who is fed up with hearing Jingle Bells in October has launched a bitter one-man war on Christmas overkill, sparking a counter-attack that he is behaving like Scrooge.
Edward Addis (56), from Cheltenham in south-west England, is seething at the annual extravaganza of tacky decorations, tired Yuletide songs and baubles in the shops months before Christmas.
Now he has created a website aimed at getting Britain to tone it down.
The Campaign for a Shorter Christmas website preaches direct action, taking the battle to the high street and the owners of “excessive lighting displays”.
Those on the receiving end of Addis’s wrath slammed the campaigner as a real-life Ebenezer Scrooge, the Christmas-hating miser in Charles Dickens’s 1843 novel A Christmas Carol.
The website contains a “Gallery of Shame” with pictures of shopping arcades festooned with flashing reindeer lights in October — slammed as “ridiculous”.
“We’re not against Christmas and we’re not against people enjoying themselves. We just want to keep the festive season in proportion,” reads the website’s slogan.
Addis has created ready-made fliers for like-minded individuals to print and hand to shops decking the halls with boughs of holly before December.
The no-nonsense leaflet states: “Our supporters dislike being hurried on from one season to the next.
“They’d like a good break between the end of the holiday season, and the Christmas festivities — a time when they can be left in peace without being bullied and pestered by shops into spending more.”
There is also some advice on not spoiling children with too many presents.
The computer-software designer blasts those who turn pleasant English villages into a scaled-down Las Vegas with blazing lights all over their brickwork.
“Do we want or need these in our residential estates? Or is this just unnecessary showing off?” asks the furious father of two.
“This leaflet has been delivered to you because your house has an offensively bright and elaborate lighting display,” reads another ready-made flier.
“Most people dislike such displays and it’s very selfish of you to impose it on your neighbours. Have you asked if they mind all the light pollution?”
Robert Edwards, who lives close by near Tewkesbury, has smothered his house with 6 000 lights for the past 12 years.
Addis is not happy.
“Displays like Mr Edwards’s turn Christmas into a music-hall-style farce.
“We’d like to ask Mr Edwards if he’s ever asked his neighbours how they feel about his display, or doesn’t he think that consideration for one’s neighbours is important?”
But Edwards vowed he would not unscrew a single bulb and hit back at Addis.
He said: “He’s just a Scrooge. He’ll want to take away Father Christmas next.” — AFP