Definitive reviews of the year before the year has finished

[WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll]

This is obviously very minor, but it annoys me every year. All of the newspapers and TV channels have their retrospectives on what happened to define in the annals of history the year that sometimes still has two weeks left to run!

I suppose, traditionally, not an awful lot of planned events happen in the last couple of weeks of the year and much of politics has already been wound down, but big developments relating to COVID and Brexit have rather blown that assumption out of the water for 2020....

The one that baffles me most of all is when we remember and pay tribute to all of the celebrities and people of note we lost 'this year'. People are just as likely to die in the last week/fortnight of the year as they are any other week/fortnight; probably more so, actually, as Winter tends to claim significantly more people - famous or ordinary - than warmer seasons. What happens if a really famous person dies between Christmas and New Year? Do they just get ignored by the media, shoved awkwardly forward for remembrance purposes into the year when they did not actually die or what?!

"And now, we look back and pay tribute to some of the people who left us in 2020 - or possibly right towards the end of 2019." I can't imagine anybody other than Alan Partridge trying to get away with saying that!

Why don't they just wait until the first week of January? Or is it our fault: do we lose interest in the year once it's properly over and no longer care about what it brought us?

It annoys me when they're done before Christmas.

It's the sort of thing I'd expect on 31 Dec or in the weekend editions if that's when New Year's Day falls.

The journalists probably write them before they finish for Christmas.

I'm sure they do try to dash them off before Christmas - in the same way they want to have the suspiciously-thin and non-time-dependent-content-full Boxing Day papers knocked out by the end of Christmas Eve.

However, I'd have thought it would be something they'd do throughout the whole year, at the time the person dies. I'd have thought they could have it ready before Christmas, but hang on until at least NYE, just in case they need to add one extra person or two at the end.

Mind you, if they did that, I'm guessing their qualifying criteria for 'important enough to include in the end-of-year memorials' might just be a little stricter in the last week of the year!

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

I'm sure they do try to dash them off before Christmas - in the same way they want to have the suspiciously-thin and non-time-dependent-content-full Boxing Day papers knocked out by the end of Christmas Eve.

However, I'd have thought it would be something they'd do throughout the whole year, at the time the person dies. I'd have thought they could have it ready before Christmas, but hang on until at least NYE, just in case they need to add one extra person or two at the end.

Mind you, if they did that, I'm guessing their qualifying criteria for 'important enough to include in the end-of-year memorials' might just be a little stricter in the last week of the year!

Nope - newspaper staff work Christmas Day. It's just obviously a lot of people are on holiday and not much in the news.

Nope - newspaper staff work Christmas Day.

That's sad - it's hardly like there is any urgent news to report on Christmas Day; although, I suppose, with dynamic online content, they probably still need to keep it up

There was a time when the Guardian didn't publish on Boxing Day - presumably because every day's papers are produced the previous day, so that their staff could have the big day off. Thinking about it, they probably would publish on Christmas Day (if there's money to be made), but for the fact that there are very few shops open to sell them.