Sunday Sermon

Creeping Hollowdaze
(set phasers on "sarcastic")

Last Monday, I saw my first Christmas decorations. It was at Ace Hardware - a row of artificial trees in the front windows. I'm sure these were not the earliest decorations up, but they were the first of which I really took notice. It reminded me of my childhood, when the stop-action Norelco Santa riding a floating-head razor through the snow was the first sign of impending Yule (if you don't get that reference, you were probably born too late to experience the weirdness that was Seventies television...). I recall watching for that commercial, and for the arrival of the Sears catalog, "The Wishbook".

I fondly remember my sister and I going through the toy pages of that venerable tome, circling the items we wanted Santa to bring. It was always Barbie corvettes or dreamhouses for her, G.I. Joe's and skateboards for me. Those were magical times for us... much more magical, in fact, then the opening of the socks and underwear we actually received on Christmas morning.

My point in all this awkward reminiscing is that those harbingers generally arrived right around Thanksgiving, or maybe the week before. Now, Christmas ads begin just before Halloween, and retailers literally shove the ghosts and skeletons off the shelves and into clearance bins to make way for wreaths and candy canes; Thanksgiving has been almost completely run over. The reason for this is obvious - Christmas and Halloween are the number one and two holidays for retailers. As with just about every damn thing in our lives, it's all about the money.

I understand that many retailers make the bulk of their money in the last quarter of the year, and I am certainly aware that my ranting will make no difference, but am I the only one who wants Christmas to be confined to December?

The calendar is actually set up pretty well. There's about a month between Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas; I need that time! I have to rest up, to prepare myself for the traditional rites of guilt, innuendo, and public drunkeness for which Irish Catholics are so famous. There's even a special training regimen that I have to adhere to in order to stave off the arterioschlerosis and diabetes that come as side dishes with our family recipes (to be honest, that "training regimen" involves increasing my daily alcohol intake about three-fold, but I digress).

So let's keep the hollowdaze where they belong, and remember what each of the last three months of the year are about; October is for tooth decay and binge drkining, November is about gluttony and an ethnocentric reconstruction of history, and December focuses on the birth of the Patron Saint of Capitalism, Santa Clause.

Go in Peace.

14 comments:

Ben Corley said...

I will fess up and say that I like this time of year. Mainly I like the fall and winter because I am "dead inside" and it makes the blackness of my soul seem like a warm, snuggly place for me to be compared to the razor-like winds that slice through your very being.

I do however like to think of the X-mas season as the day following Thanksgiving through the end of New Years. Personally, I saw the Yule Tide Blitz gear up before Shalloween even came. Seasons Confoundeire brought to you by Wal-Mart.

Linus said...

I can get behind the idea of the Christmas season beginning the day after Thanksgiving, but if we aren't careful it will be starting the day after Labor Day! One month is long enough for any holiday.

Incidentally, I think the same sort of restrictions should exist for political campaigns. One month of non-stop political ads would be plenty...

Modig said...

Just. Don't. Let. It. Bother. You. FUCK! LOL!

With that said, Thanksgiving needs a better marketing team. I want to see Pilgrim action figures, damn it! With savage-smiting action!

Linus said...

Brendon, that is the kind of lackadaisical attitude that got us into this mess in the first place!

Besides, I see ranting as a higher calling... my way of giving back to the community. :)

Ben Corley said...

G-Logg I am going to pass up the obvious problems with syntax behind your comment and move onto agreeing with HSBP, let's lock that bad boy down to one month, no more, no less.

The one month of CONSTANT political ads however... I think I would kill something small, furry and cute... just for fun. Please God save us from such a day!

Mandyfish said...

I'm a strong believer in the "it's not christmas season until you see Santa in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade." That's how I will always time it. Decorations, shopping, holiday cheer...the whole sha-bang is pushed aside until that moment.

Modig said...

Kudos to you Mandy! You have your own "holiday activation switch." Regardless of what is happening around you.

Your Sinfulness, I would argue that my attitude is far from lackadaisical. I am quite determined in not letting the early holiday blitz bother me. It's not like there is a democratic process that lets us keep Wal-Mart from breaking out the holiday bonanza.

What? No love for my Pilgrim action figure idea? You two old sods are making me a sad panda with all this dire pessimism. ;)

sivartkram said...

OK, G-log. The action figures are definitely a good idea, as long as you have the natives as well. And they must be totally savage looking with crude bows and arrows and clubs and cro-magnon faces, and stuff like that... and the whites need to have bibles to throw at them, so the heathens can be saved.

Or was it the other way around, with the savages providing food for the pilgrims. I can never remember.

(watch out!... rabid sheep!... baaaaH!... pow!)

Modig said...

LOL! I miss you Mark! :(


"Ok, gay!" --Ed, Shaun of the Dead

Linus said...

Brendon,

I call it lackadaisical because for too long Americans have accepted whatever the media has fed us. Thanksgiving doesn't need a better marketing team - the marketing teams need to shut the hell up and let Thanksgiving have its due.
All of these seasons exist for reasons that have nothing to do with making some godless corporation richer. I refuse to go quietly into that good night...

Flynn said...

I don't know how many of you venture into the dark, smelly, civilization-that-time-forgot that is the Laramie K-mart, but they never actually took Christmas stuff down. I dared enter in June to by an emergency bag of charcoal and was greeted by a strange old man (who's element was more a black van filled with candy and puppies environment, than the K-mart outdoors dept) standing just to the left of the plastic Christmas trees and outdated tickle-me Elmo's...

It kind of ruins a guy on the festivities. On the up side, the steady progression of the commercially religious holidays means that eggnog hits the shelves that much earlier!
Which brings me to what I believe to be the real Christmas conundrum: why don't they sell Eggnog year round?

Linus said...

NCM,

It's part of a deal the egg nog lobby made with the government. They agreed to only sell it seasonally, and the legislature agreed to not demand a Surgeon General's warning on the package.

The American Heart Association was not amused. A drink that has more fat and calories than the average sumo wrestler's lunch should at least be sold in a black package with a skull and crossbones on it...

Rachel said...

I have long argued that I hate Christmas, but in Target a couple week's ago and had a stunningly difficult realization: I secretly like the commercial garbage. The lights, the fake snow, the annoying music and fanatical shopping, I feel giddy with it. I want to run out and join the commercial frenzy.

Must buy peppermint mocha at Starbucks to maintain energy for shopping...

Anybody know a good 12 step program for this?

Levi said...

rachel has capitalismitis! 50 CC's of liberal guilt stat!

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