‘If you’re thinking of going to York Christmas market on a Saturday,” says an exasperated local on TikTok, “can you just not?” I thought instantly of my friend E, a peaceable, gentle woman – a therapist! – who is driven to seething rage by the appearance of the first chalets. Everyone I know here is feeling the same Scroogery, muttering in stark horror: “carnage”, “crazy”, “never”.
Those of us who live in York are not easily spooked; we’re used to dodging the flailing swords and booming faux-Norse utterances of historical re-enactors, fighty racegoers and crying, shoeless hens, shedding whisps of pink boa. But the market, with its shuffling hordes stuck in a bottleneck outside Claire’s because someone decided to try on a Viking helmet, 40-deep queues for a plastic beaker of mulled wine and man asking for £2 for a selfie with his plastic dinosaur, has broken us.
