Too soon? An A-Z of Christmas, from Aldi to Zzzzzzzzzz

Aldi: Given the season that's in it, the letter A should really stand for Advent – and in another, more godly world, it does. But in the world in which we live, Christmas is all about rampant consumerism. Over the weekend the German discounter replaced its Halloween stock – and there was a lot of it – with Christmas stock with terrifying speed. Out went the pumpkin-carving kits, spooky bunting, masks, scary spiderwebs made from balls of cotton wool (when did Halloween become so elaborate?) and in came Advent candles (€1.49), festive sacks (€4.99), fancy-looking hanging decorations at €6.49 for four and much more besides. And it's only just begun.

Brown Thomas: When it comes to racing out of the festive traps, no one comes close to BT. On August 20th, when temperatures across the land soared to 20 degrees, and Santa Claus and his happy little helpers turned over for another snooze, the high-end retailer's outlets in Cork, Dublin, Galway and Limerick decked their halls (or some of them) and started flogging Christmas decorations. It happens every year, and every year it is accompanied by faux outrage. So it was this year, but BT robustly defended itself against the keyboard warriors who raged against it and pointed out that it was merely responding to demand.

Calories: Not wanting to rain on your festive parade or anything, but have you any idea how many calories you're going to consume over Christmas? No? Well, let us enlighten you. Once you've polished off the (suddenly lethal) morning fry, the turkey, the ham, all those roasted potatoes and buttery sprouts, the biscuits from the nice tin, the mince pies (with cream), the plum pudding (brandy butter), the sherry-spiked trifle, the fancy cheese, the crackers and the Quality Street on Christmas Day, you will have taken in about 6,000 calories, more than three times an adult's recommended daily intake. Add a few glasses of wine, a couple of glasses of Baileys and an Irish coffee and your calorie intake is likely to top 8,000. And that is just one day. Even if you scale back on the remaining 11 days of Christmas, you're still likely to put on half a stone between December 25th and January 2nd. Sorry.

December: Would it be so hard to introduce legislation prohibiting talk of Christmas – at least in a nakedly commercial way – until the beginning of next month? We'd all be the better for it. And we appreciate the irony of moaning about the early start to the Christmas madness when we ourselves run a Christmas feature in early November, so there's no need to point it out.

Easter: All the talk now is about the birth of the baby Jesus, sort of, but mark our words, the conversation will shift to his temporary passing soon enough and Easter eggs will be appearing on our supermarket shelves within six weeks.

Fowl play: Some people go for geese, but the real Irish Christmas experience revolves around turkey, if only to allow us to talk about how we're not mad about it. The really cute money-savers buy their turkey at the end of November and freeze it. Any turkey that has reached more than 7kg by the end of this month has to be sold or it will grow too big for any oven. But demand is low, so they have to be sold cheap. Apart from buying early, remember that when buying turkey, don't buy a small one. It might cost less but it is a false economy. The bone structure of a 6.35kg turkey and a 3.2kg turkey is pretty much the same, so you get more meat when you go large. When you're tired of eating it over Christmas, put the rest in the freezer. You'll be glad of it come the middle of January.

God: Or maybe Google. Or a mishmash of both? If Christmases past are anything to go by, one of the most common Google searches in Ireland in December will be "What time is Mass?" Or some derivative of that. Come January the search engine will not be troubled by such questions.

Ho x 3: Sometimes the frenzy can be wearying but the whole business of Santa Claus is still brilliant.

Icing: The best thing, or maybe even the only good thing, about any Christmas cake.

Jumpers: Like beards and hipsters, Christmas jumpers appeared on the festive landscape suddenly and unexpectedly five years ago. First they came from pop-up shops and were worn by a handful of people. It seemed harmless enough, but, as the years passed, shops big and small and cheap and really, really dear hopped on the bandwagon. Last year we reached peak jumper, and for weeks in the run-up to Christmas, pubs became no-go areas as folk wearing ridiculous clothes got plastered on pub crawls in the name of fun.

Kris kindle: This is either a pointless enterprise in which everyone in your office wastes a small amount of money buying a rubbish present for a colleague they don't really like, or a clever way for families to circumvent the madness by buying just one thoughtful present for a randomly selected family member.

Lewis, John: It probably hasn't aired yet, but by the end of the week you'll most likely have seen, or at least heard about, the annual John Lewis tearjerker Christmas ad. When you get around to watching it, remember the ad is not a traditional part of Christmas – the first one aired in 2009 – and as the tears stream down your face, think of the manipulative advertising "creative" who fist-pumped the air last March after they devised the best way to make you both cry and buy.

Mistletoe: We looked up the roots of mistletoe on the internet and were told that in Norse times a character called Loki tricked a blind god called Hodur into murdering Balder with an arrow made of mistletoe. It was the only plant that could kill Balder, you see. Why we're now supposed to kiss under it is anyone's guess.

Nativity: It's easy to forget what the whole thing is about, which is Santa Claus travelling to Bethlehem with nothing but gold, frankincense and myrrh in his sack and climbing down the stable's chimney.

O Holy Night: Surely the greatest Christmas carol.

Post: In a normal week An Post might handle about 2½ million pieces of post each day. In the early part of next month that doubles to more than five million, and in the last few days before Christmas, the company will handle more than seven million letters and parcels every day. In the past we have been somewhat dismissive of Christmas cards, but this year we'll be sending them. They're a great antidote to the social media whirl and a good way of donating money to charity. Do remember to buy your cards directly from a charity – either online or in-store – as opposed to a large retail chain that creams off most of the profit. That way you can ensure that as much of your cash as possible goes to the source you want it to go to.

Queen's speech: While Queen Elizabeth II has never been as popular in the Republic as she is now, there is no excuse to watch her Christmas monologue. Why, then, does it appear so hard to avoid?

Rudolph: If you assume that half the children under the age of 10 leave carrots out for the red-nosed reindeer on Christmas Eve, he will have to eat about 400,000 of them in Ireland alone. A carrot weighs about 75g; there are about 13 carrots in 1kg. Tesco is selling carrots for €1.49 per kilogram, which means one carrot costs 11 cent and Ireland will spend about €50,000 feeding Rudolph. The cookies for Santa Claus will cost more again.

Snow: We're all supposed to spend the weeks running up to the big day dreaming of a white Christmas, but remember back in 2010 when the weather gods heard our pleas and bestowed upon us the whitest Christmas we'd seen in more than five decades? It was grand for a while, but then the inability to get from A to B without a snowplough – or at the very least those chains that go on tyres – became annoying.

Toys: A couple of weeks ago, Argos published a list of what it reckons will be the best-selling toys this Christmas. The Force Awakens Interactive figures, at €144.99 a pop, will appear on many children's letters to Santa. These "interactive" Darth Vaders, Chewys and Kylo Rens have several modes of play, and while you know well that they're not going to be as good as they look or sound, your children don't. There's also a Frozen bike: it's like any other bike but with Elsa and Anna stickers on it. Our favourite is the Pie Face board game, which costs €28.99. It sounds brilliant. You fill the throwing arm with a water-soaked sponge or whipped cream if you want to live dangerously. You spin a spinner that tells you how many turns of the handle to take. You turn the handle and hope you don't get a pie in the face. It's like Buckaroo with added pie in the face.

Unusual: The search for unusual gifts has never been easier thanks to the proliferation of websites that specialise in selling weird and wonderful presents. We like thisiswhyimbroke.com, which has a gift that turns your stairs into a slide; and odditymall.com, which has Twister bed sheets.

Virgin birth: Without it there'd be no Christmas.

Wrapping paper: Can there be anything nicer than the sight of loads of wonderfully wrapped presents, promising so much, sitting under a Christmas tree as the big day approaches? It almost makes up for all the rage that comes when you can't find the end bit of the Sellotape or the scissors, or work out how to beautifully wrap a ukulele.

X-Factor: It single-handedly ruined the race for the Christmas No 1 slot.

Yuletide: It's one of those familiar Christmas words but its origins are a lot less familiar. Yule was a German festival devoted to the god Odin and the pagan Anglo-Saxon Modranicht.

Zeds: There needs to be a whole lot of these.