100 Weeks of Scotland: Christmas

We all prepare for Christmas in different ways, if indeed we do at all. I love Christmas. Perhaps not in the same way as I did when I was ten years old when the excitement was almost too much bear, and that crushing feeling when you went to bed on Christmas night realising that it was all over and wouldn’t happen again for an almost impossibly long year.

Picture: Alan McCredie

Week Fifty Nine

What I really like at this time of year is seeing the different ways people prepare and plan for Christmas. Although the hideousness of shop advertising and stocking Christmas goods from September onwards is now sadly, I suspect, here to stay. It is really only once December arrives that things really start moving up through the gears.

Decorating the outside of a house was an alien concept when I was growing up, and yet now as I walk the dog down to the park it sometimes feels like I am on the strip in Las Vegas, albeit a very low wattage and semi-detached one. I can’t pretend I don’t like it though and to be honest the brighter and more over the top the better.

Picture: Alan McCredie

As enjoyable as this exuberance is, the other side of the coin is just as fun. The grudging acceptance that Christmas is coming whether we like it or not leads to some wonderfully half-hearted attempts at bringing joy to the world. It’s amazing how far a little bit of tinsel will go to lift the midwinter gloom. Just the one bit, mind…

My favourite image this week shows a little bit of defiance in the face of overwhelming odds in an Edinburgh towerblock. I love the way, right at the centre, Christmas is very definitely coming to town.

So this week I have a couple of images of houses decorated to make absolutely sure we don’t forget what time of year it is, as well as lonely Christmas tree at an office-block reception.

And who can forget pantomime?

Picture: Alan McCredie

Not me!

(oh yes I can…)

My last image is from a matinee performance of Jack & The Beanstalk in Dunfermline, as the crowds brave the wind and rain, for that favourite of Christmas traditions, the Panto.

• Alan McCredie began the ‘100 weeks of Scotland’ website in October last year, and it will conclude in Autumn 2014. McCredie’s goal is to chronicle two years of Scottish life in the run-up to the independence referendum.

Picture: Alan McCredie

McCredie says ‘one hundred weeks...’ is intended to show all sides of the country over the next two years. On the site, he says: “Whatever the result of the vote Scotland will be a different country afterward. These images will show a snapshot of the country in the run up to the referendum.

“The photos will be of all aspects of Scottish culture - politics, art, social issues, sport and anything else that catches the eye.”

Follow the project at 100weeksofscotland.com. You can also follow Alan on Twitter.

All pictures (c) Alan McCredie/ 100 weeks of Scotland