Although one swallow does not a summer romance make - or whatever the old adage is - it does seem that one Santa Claus does indeed a Christmas make.

And now - which is possibly a record even for this column - a brief digression. I don't really hold with this Santa Claus stuff. When I was a lad he was always called Father Christmas. Santa Claus just seems so...American, and Christmas is resolutely not American. They've got Thanksgiving and at a push I suppose they can lay claim to celebrating Halloween better than anyone else, but they're not having Christmas, no matter how much they try to tell me that Coca-Cola is a Christmas drink. I've never understood that one, either. Nor, now I come to think of it, why anyone would want - as all the adverts seem to think is a given - a new sofa for Christmas. Why, so your merry old uncle can throw up on it on Boxing Day?

Anyway, back to the point. Claire and I took the kids to Bingley for the Christmas lights switch-on at the weekend, though we actually missed the lights switch-on itself, about which I was quite upset because I heard that it was being carried out by a dog, and that I really would like to have seen.

I can't remember why we missed the switch-on, although it was probably because after a couple of hours in the cold and intermittent rain Charlie and Alice had pretty much had their fill of the festivities, and we did have a moment of tearfulness when we were told that Charlie couldn't have his face painted, despite the fact we turned up to the face-painting at 3.30pm and it was advertised as going on until 4pm.

We could hear several other children wailing, "but I want my face painting" over the course of the next half an hour or so. Maybe a compromise could have been reached by putting a blob of paint just under the eye of each child that was turned away, thus creating a Pollock-like effect when they were told it had shut up shop.

All in all, it was quite a nice little event, with a free road-train belting out Christmas songs, a fairground ride, trampolines and Father Christmas himself, doling out presents (a whoopee cushion and a hair-scrunchie thing respectively. I can't remember what the kids got) and Father Christmassy wisdom about being good and going to bed on time.

It was all very pleasant. Still, there remained just one nagging doubt as we came away... it was actually only November 24, a full calendar month away from Christmas itself. Is that it, then? Has Christmas well and truly begun in the Barnett household?

The state of the TV at the moment would seem to suggest so, as would the pictures of holly and baubles adorning everything that drops through the letterbox from unsolicited catalogues for High Street stores to letters inquiring if I'm ever likely to earn any serious money from High Street banks.

Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas as much as the next Jacob Marley. But as talk turned on Saturday to whether we should get a tree the next day, I suddenly got a severe attack of the humbugs.

So is the festive season, as I fear, coming far too early? Or, as I suspect deep down, have I become a curmudgeonly old...noise of the variety made by Charlie's new whoopee cushion from Father Christmas?