Have you seen the new Christmas tree in St Pancras station? It's fourteen metres high, made entirely from Disney toys and it burns my eyes. This is not what Christmas is about. I want softly twinkling lights, jingle bells and a cinnamon and orange aroma drifting through the air. I don't want an advert full of garish colour and cartoons on my way to work and I definitely don't want to see Olaf from Frozen having to spend the whole of Christmas in Mickey Mouse's crotch - even Minnie wouldn't put up with that.
Don't get me wrong I love a Disney film: I enjoy reminiscing about my favourite characters (Lady from Lady and the Tramp), singing all the songs in the shower and at a certain age I definitely fancied Aladdin. I just don't want to see my favourite characters shoved together and stapled to a Christmas tree like some awkward Disney Christmas party when you introduce several families to each other for the very first time: they won't get on! Dumbo was never meant to meet the Little Mermaid, she's only just learnt to walk now she has to run from a sad elephant.
Not only does this look like a massive Disney funeral pyre someone forgot to set alight on the 5th November, parents visiting the station have to put up with yet further pleas for presents from Santa: "Mummy, mummy, can I have Olaf for Christmas", "No dear, he's busy with Mickey". We are bombarded with enough Christmas shopping propaganda this month and now its taking the form of a Christmas decoration - it is worse than the Jack Daniels tree in London in 2012: at least that had a muted pallet, pretty lights and you could drink it. Even Damien Hirst has his own Christmas tree this year, it's in Mayfair outside The Connaught and it represents the power of science and medicine. Hirst's tree is something I can get behind, it has an actual message and he has made an effort to make snowmen out of paracetamol and the hanging syringes kind of look like candy canes.
At least all the toys from the St Pancras christmas tree will be donated to a children's charity - staple holes and all.