It used to be that the seasonal red came in small doses. The few berries on real holly, the robin redbreasts, whose blush came, or so they used to say, from the blood of the Saviour, shed on the cross.
Small pagan tussles that left a token sprinkling of blood on the snow.
At any other time of the year, you know, it would be the colour of sex, that woman in the red dress, with her red light - that scarlet woman. It is the colour of shamlessness and shame, the colour of flagrancy. It shows a kind of power, to be so obvious, so indifferent. A kind of power that, for example, yellow, just doesn t have. Because red is for danger and red is for stop.