Over the past few years, Britain has gone Christmas market mad. From mid-November, we've whooped in wonder at all the twinkling lights, endless festive music and pretty little chalet stalls festooned in baubles and bows - all of which are for sale, naturally.
We've lapped up the smells of roasting chestnuts, candyfloss (£10 a cone), Nutella waffles and £12-a-pop pigs in blankets.
We've wallowed in nostalgic joy as we've sipped out of £9 cups of mulled wine and often travelled many miles for the pleasure.
Not that we need to. Because Christmas markets are everywhere. Every city centre, town square and cathedral close across the land seems to have been turned into a makeshift market, immersing us in an imaginary yuletide of old. They have popped up in car parks, community centres and even outside some London Tube stations.
Of course they have. These markets are big business. They generate hundreds of millions of pounds and boost the footfall in local shops as visitors flock to city centres, bringing them to a gridlocked standstill.
But this year - and sorry to be the Grinch among all the (grossly overpriced) Christmas joy - the tide is finally turning. Visitors are no longer drenched in the festive spirit but are, instead, really rather cross.
They are fed up of the sky-high prices, the crowds, revolting food and sour-faced stallholders, some of whom travel from Eastern Europe to flog us a lot of identical overpriced tat we could get elsewhere for a fraction of the cost. And shoppers are sharing their gripes on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook - anywhere they can.
Bath Christmas market, celebrating its 25th anniversary, is damned as 'a rubbish, overpriced hellscape' and Britain's 'Worst Xmas market' on TikTok.
Edinburgh is slammed for the cost of its wares, its rubbish 'fayre' and, again, the crowds in hundreds of reviews. 'People are crammed in to the point you can't actually walk ... very unenjoyable,' said a visitor.
Indeed, overcrowding was blamed for a brawl breaking out at London's Hyde Park Winter Wonderland on Friday night, which saw two young men in a queue trading blows after one was apparently 'touching his missus' according to a bystander.
Birmingham's Frankfurt Christmas market, meanwhile, has been called 'rough, not safe, a very hostile place'.
So to see if we've all just gone a bit 'Bah humbug' after a difficult year or whether the Christmas music really has gone into the minor key, I put on my Santa hat and visited a few last week.
I started with the market in the heart of Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, where the blurb promises I will enjoy a 'diverse range of traders selling locally sourced and handmade crafts' (no mention of fisticuffs) and take the Wonderland spirit with me as I go.
Sadly, I did not. It didn't help that I visited on a chilly grey Tuesday afternoon. Or that there is a £5 entry fee, plus £1 booking fee and a very thorough frisking on the gate by the grumpy security team who are clearly sick of Christmas already.
'It's dead today but, at the weekend, oh my God it's awful.
A two‑hour wait at least to get in - I don't think we've ever seen the back of the queue,' said one security guard. 'Which means by the time they get to us they're not always their happiest.'
When I arrived at the main drag of Christmas Market - a sad array of about 30 prefab chalets set around a central area sporting some burnt-out firepits and a slippery floor consisting of muddy steel sheets, stapled together - I thought I must have taken a wrong turn. But I buy a £4 bottle of tepid water and, over the blast of thumping Ariana Grande, get chatting to a nice couple from Kidderminster. ‘It’s not what we’d expected,’ says Tory, 34, who has travelled down specially with her partner Marco, 32. ‘We thought it’d be like those in Austria with the twinkly lights and music and little craft stalls. But it’s, well, look…’ she peters off into silence. And we do look.
At the mud, the sad expanse of stalls with names such as Trendy Furs, Cozy Layers and Dreamii Castle selling factory-made plastic decorations for £14.99. Synthetic stuffed toys from £25. Teeny bags of sweets for £12. Candyfloss at £10 a cone and, rather surprisingly, teeth whitening powder.
Or at least trying to sell it.
Because business is not exactly brisk, and not just due to the crazy prices. For while visitors often queue for hours to go on the rides at Winter Wonderland, there’s hardly anybody here at the Christmas Market, where the stallholders tell me they’ve paid between £12,000 and £17,000 for their pitch. Plus, in many cases, a 10 per cent surcharge on all sales.
‘The footfall is very bad,’ says the owner of Ant Elm Hats. ‘I came last year and it was great. This year I will never even break even. It is a disaster.’
Two stalls down, Jem, an architect from Istanbul, tells me that for the third year running he has taken five weeks off work to man a Christmas bauble shop at £200 a day. ‘It is more than I get paid at home because [the stallholder] usually takes in thousands,’ he says, though today he is untroubled by customers.
Next door, the Turkish lady on the deserted sweet shack looks desperate. Several stalls along, a vendor is huddled by an electric bar heater in front of her jewellery, body oils and trinkets for sale. She tells me she’s sold nothing today at all.
And along from her is the tooth whitening stall.
‘We thought it would be a good Christmassy riff - “Make London smile white and bright,”’ says the woman running it. ‘But today I’ve had one sale. And all day yesterday just four, but at a discount. Many stalls won’t break even.’
Let alone make the £50,000 or so they say the organisers forecast.
‘They promised we’d make so much money,’ says one stallholder who prefers not to be named. ‘In November we were worried, but they kept saying: “Wait till December - it will perk up.” Now they say: “Wait till the school holidays.”’
Sellers can’t even pack up and cut their losses because the contract says they have to man the stalls 12 hours a day, every day, or they’ll face penalties.
‘They even said they are watching us,’ says the trader, pointing to a cluster of security cameras on a pole. Blimey. No wonder there are no small businesses here with local stuff. They’d be bankrupt by the end of the month in this sad place where the only thing I would want to spend money on is a taxi out, fast.
For its part, Hyde Park Winter Wonderland says commercial terms with stallholders are dealt with by a third party operator 'with the expectation that traders are communicated with clearly and constructively'.
Of course, Christmas markets have the problem of too many visitors. Like York, which attracts hundreds of thousands and has been plagued by bad reviews describing chronic overcrowding in the narrow cobblestone lanes, appalling queues, disappointing stalls with overpriced 'local' crafts, some of which were clearly made in factories in Asia.
Oh yes, and traffic gridlock resulting in a two-and-a-half-hour bus ride to the Park & Ride.
Which means that while other businesses in the city centre benefit from all the extra trade, the locals loathe the market.
‘I live in York and it’s hell leading up to Christmas. I avoid it at all costs for weeks,’ says one resident.
Because Christmas markets aren’t just for Christmas. They go on and on. Winter Wonderland is open for five weeks. York opened on November 13. Birmingham started on November 1, for goodness’ sake.
‘Britain’s best Christmas Market’ in Bath is barely open for three weeks, but locals call it ‘three weeks of Hell’ and complain about closed roads, ugly barriers and their city centre being out of bounds every weekend.
But the worst accusation of all is that it is lacking any festive spirit.
I visited on a weekday and, I have to say, it was OK. Not as Christmassy as I’d hoped. No festive music. No Santa. Not many lights. Too many stalls selling normal market stuff like bags, coats and T-shirts. And a lot of moronically pointless gifts—wooden ties (yes, really) for £25; banana and pumpkin cookie mix kits for dogs. But you could walk about freely and there were plenty of charming stalls selling local arts and crafts and delicious foods.
A lot of people have travelled a long way. Like retirees Cory, 52, and Lynda, 53, from Saltash in Cornwall, part way through a Christmas market tour in their camper van, fuelling up on mulled wine (£9) and sausage rolls (£13) before they launch in.
'We love Christmas markets. And this is supposed to be one of the best!' says Cory, who is wearing an elf hat with floppy ears. 'We're doing Oxford and Cheltenham as well. It's something to look forward to just before Christmas - soak up the atmosphere.'
And the Parker sisters, Laura, Angela, and Helen, from south Devon, who tell me that they are Christmas market aficionados but feeling a bit disappointed today. ‘It’s very, very overpriced and not very Christmassy.No music.No entertainers,’