Lights and trees in the streets, pandoros and panettones in supermarkets. Even the year Domini 2025 is marked by the arrival of the Holy Holidays with a certain – annoying and annoying – advance, if only the temperatures, for one thing, show no signs of dropping.
It’s hot, in fact, it’s decidedly hot in this super late autumn, autumn in which the sun still reigns supreme and people go to the beach on weekends as if they were in Miami. It’s hot, definitely hot, and while I buy what I need for a rice salad, I find soft, sugary pandoros and panettone with and without candied fruit among the stands.
Did I need it? Not at all. What I need is to experience the time that is here and now: autumn with its incomparable colors, the fruits of this season, the roasted chestnuts and the village festivals.
Christmas is not upon us, but they want to make us believe it with all their might, to inculcate little by little, so we are led to already buy essentially useless stuff because “you never knowWhich is why most of our cities have already been invaded by traditional lights and super mega trees here and there, not to mention the traders who are already competing to see who can set up the most kitsch.
In Bari in recent days, for example, the lights have already been officially turned on, while on the other side of the city many people were planting umbrellas on the beach.
Don’t you see some distortions? The result, in Bari, Naples or Olbia, is a surreal contrast: while in the heart of the city the bright comet is already immortalized, on the seashore there is a fight over a parking space near the sand.
But there are still involved, whether you want it or not, the now cleared Halloween and the work with the pumpkin, and then there is December 8th and the 13th, Saint Lucia, when there is the novena. And then all the preparation, slow and intimate. Bringing Christmas forward to October, however, is not just an aesthetic whim, but is a strong and clear signal of a world that is going fast and badly.
And not only that:
Christmas lights turned on in October: how much energy ends up wasted?
Turning on the Christmas lights two months before necessary means a very simple thing: consuming extra energy for pure entertainment, in a context of climate crisis and water emergency that we can no longer pretend not to see.
The cities justify the advance with the usual reasons: “to encourage trade”, “to enhance the centre”, “to create an atmosphere”. But there is a dark side: the more hours turned on correspond to more consumption. An almost trivial thing, but one that we continue to ignore
Because it’s not just an opening night: it’s a whole two months of watts dispersing in the streets while the planet deals with off-scale temperatures.
“They are LEDs, they consume nothing” …but is it really like that?
The famous “They’re LED anyway” is the perfect topic to clear your conscience. Yes, LEDs consume less energy than old light bulbs. But they still consume energy.
And they consume:
Reducing doesn’t just mean “switching to LED”. It means turning off when you don’t need it.
More sober cities for a more real Christmas
The paradox is that the magic doesn’t vanish if you use your head:
Christmas shouldn’t be a competition to see who lights up the most, especially when it’s 24 degrees outside in October and the sea behaves as if it were July. The risk? Getting used to a winter that doesn’t arrive and a Christmas that no longer tastes like Christmas but only about marketing.
Maybe we could slow down for a moment, look around and ask ourselves what sense could there possibly be in running towards artificial lights, when reality is telling us that we have a planet that is really getting warmer?
