Christmas, in case you needed reminding, is fast approaching. But now, dear reader, is not the time to put your decorations up.

I know it’s none of my business, I know there’s a certain Scrooge-like element to this, but our desire to deck the halls with boughs of holly earlier and earlier each year is not something, I feel, to be encouraged.

Driving near Westwood Cross in Thanet last weekend, there was a house with a front room which had clearly dug its decorations out and strung them up.

It is mid-November. There are still rotting Halloween pumpkins on people’s doorsteps. Fireworks are still sporadically being let off. We’re not there yet.

Christmas has, quite frankly, a time and a place and to overexpose ourselves to its undoubted magic now is to dilute and exhaust it.

Even those who think they are demonstrating restraint by putting their trees up on December 1 are, in my miserable opinion at least, going too soon.

By all means hit play on the Spotify Christmas playlist at the dawn of next month in the privacy of your home, but putting up the baubles any earlier than mid-December is too much, too soon.

Because the magic of Christmas lies in its allocated time slot and the fact it is – or at least should be - confined to it.

Unless we have egos the size of the Trafalgar Square Norwegian Spruce, we don’t start celebrating our birthdays a month in advance do we? Easter eggs are not consumed in February. So why do we need to go so heavy, so fast, with Christmas?

It is a time, at the end of the year, to let our hair down. To pretend we like socialising with all and sundry and can, for a week, park the diet and stick our snouts in a trough full of calorific party food.

It does not start in November. It does not start at the beginning of December.

Otherwise we go from say two weeks of festivities to the best part of two months (assuming you bring your decorations down on Twelfth Night). That’s a sixth of the entire year!

If you need to get your fix of twinkling lights then head to the shops – most of which already seem to have created festive displays in order to capitalise on those getting some early present-buying in the bag. Enjoy the build-up in small doses.

They can at least justify it plus they’ll have everything pulled down by Christmas Eve in preparation for the January sales.

Come on Kent, however excited you may be about the season of goodwill, keep it to yourself – at least for another four weeks.

Bah, humbug.