Every year.
Every damned year the commercial juggernaut winds it’s spring a little tighter and steps up the date, that invisible line that denotes the winter holidays, most notable amongst them being Christmas. For criminy’s sake, we’ve barely broken Fall’s hymen… give us a chance to break her in a bit before we kick her to the curb to let Winter’s icy feet warm beneath our sheets.
There’s no disguising the fact that I am a Halloween fan. I love the Fall season and Halloween is the greatest way to celebrate it — give the devil his due, so to speak. Halloween is a voluntary holiday, widely recognized but not federally mandated. There are no bank closures; no government employees get the day off (which is a bit of a shocker there). Everyone is allowed to take or leave it at his or her own discretion.
Halloween is a time of year when folks can let their guard down and have some fun, to let their inner eight-year-old bubble to the surface and help them take life a little less seriously for a while. It lets people be silly without a license, and that’s a dandy thing to be every so often.
Christmas is a mandatory holiday. Regardless of your level of recognition and celebration, it still seeps into your life. Businesses, banks and governments shut down. The stores transform into shark infested waters that you dive into with an albacore tuna strapped to your back — cut, bleeding and chumming the waters. It becomes a sales fiesta and common decency is a piñata that gets beat to hell with a frenzied stick.
The biggest kernel stuck in my craw is this: it seems that no sooner do the stores put out Halloween decorations and other accoutrements, then they are shoving it down and back to make room for Christmas crap. Truly, it’s ridiculous. You start to see Halloween stuff around September 1st, with the hardcore push starting around the end of September — 2 months worth of exposure, and that’s being generous. With Christmas, product is on the shelves in mid September with the first rush hitting November 1st, and the really big push happening after November 26th. All told 3½ to 4 months, and it starts earlier every single year.
I don’t want to see a happy, jolly little elf sitting on a shelf (and getting top billing, no less) next to the pumpkin that bleeds from the eyes when you plug it in. It’s just wrong. Unless of course you make the elf bleed instead. From the ass. Santa’s little elf-whore that got gang-banged by the other elves when they "circled the wagons" in the North Pole elf dormitory. Plug him and watch the red fountain flow… see the animatronic rictus of pain writhe across his face.
Ahem.
Don’t even go looking for Thanksgiving merchandise. While I don’t necessarily buy up all the turkey and Pilgrim crap I can find, nor do I really decorate for that portion of the season, I do think that all holidays should be allowed fair representation in the stores for those that do.
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy Christmas, but obviously not for the "birth of Christ" aspect of it. At the very least, it should be a reminder to spend time with your family and friends. After all, the government has designated it a federal holiday so you should have a good chance of having some time off to do so. What it should not be — and I know this is a trite and well-traveled path — is an excuse to be a decent person for a few days when otherwise you are an outrageous, unmitigated asshole. If you’re going to be decent human being, it should be 365/24/7, or at least as close as possible. It’s a life-choice, not a seasonal change.
The commercialism of the Christmas holiday is not what bothers me so much as the steamroller effect. Hell, I embrace being able to buy what I like to celebrate how I like. If Halloween had no commercial element, I wouldn’t be able to get all the groovy decorations and effects that I love so much… and let’s give a great big hand to Don Post and the other people who have been releasing more and more gobs of realistic horror and gothic designs to the Halloween market each year (I have a tendency to steer clear of the "cute" decorations). I freely admit that I’m a consumer whore. I live in a capitalist nation and I embrace that.
But…
Don’t shove things down my throat. Don’t overshadow one (or more) perfectly enjoyable holiday in favor or another, especially if the holiday taking precedence offers a bouquet of peace in one outstretched hand and a Louisville Slugger of animosity in the other hand hidden behind it’s back. Retract the creeping commercial glacier dates a bit and let Halloween catch its breath. Don’t assault me with black and orange on one side, and red, green and white one the other. Keep Christ in Christmas and out of my candy bowl. Take a lesson from Jack Skellington.
Good night kiddies, and unpleasant dreams.
So, you want to see a "fair representation" for all holidays in the stores? Would fair be an equal division of shelf time per holiday? Should Washington’s birthday have the same shelf-time as Halloween? What amount of time should that be? Be sure to not make it too long, so as to avoid the overlap you seem to hate.
Obviously, no one wants that. Some holidays are more popular than others. No one gives a shit about Columbus Day except Columbus and the Sopranos. More people give more of a shit about Christmas than Halloween. The shit’s going to be on the shelves as soon as they can sell it. I thought you said you were embracing capitalism. This is capitalism. Try having it at all without supply and demand.
Well, obviously nobody gives a shit about Columbus Day and Washington or Lincoln’s birthdays except car dealerships, furniture stores and those consumers in the market for a new vehicle or interior decor. Granted, they are technically holidays as well but I am referring more to the larger, more actively observed ones (and yes, I’m being exclusionary for the sake of brevity).
I don’t think we need to parcel out the dates and times so you never have overlaps between holidays. Overlaps are inevitable in some cases due to proximity. All I’d like to see is a little more breathing room between marketing hailstorms. Then last quarter of the year is hectic enough without the need to feel pushed like a square peg in a round hole into dealing with another major holiday that is still many months away while still in the early throes of dealing with the one on hand. Let me enjoy the one that’s on its way a bit first.
Ya, Christmas is a very popular holiday but so still is Halloween (but admittedly still taking a back seat to the big gift-giving one). I’ll admit that Christmas is a very lucrative holiday for the retail sector. It’s the result of a decades of ever increasing clever marketing and generations of people who have rapidly dwindling time to accomplish things, instilling the fear that you need to buy more, expensive and complex gifts for everyone you ever shook hands with during your natural born life. That’s about all the holiday has been distilled down to. Every year that passes brings with it an ever-growing feel of panic from the masses. That is what is driving that intangible start date earlier and earlier.
The sentiment is mostly gone (I agree with the sentiment of the holiday, just not the origins). It’s a big game of one-upmanship, and sadly I’m as up to my eyeballs in it as the next guy. The giving of the gift has replaced the genuine expression of warmth and love for friends and family. It’s become a race rather than a time to relax.
My disgust is twofold. First and most importantly at the diminished attention to a glorious holiday such as Halloween that still retains a healthy dose of human interaction at it’s heart. Second at the vapid, empty consumerism that replaces genuine warmth and good will during Christmas.
You see, ultimately no amount of me shaking my tiny fist at these behemoths is going to make any of it better. That’s the depressing part. All I can do is hang on to what I feel in my heart, preserve it for the future and share it with any and all that will accept it.
The problem is obviously with me.
And now an official statement from the International House of Christmas:
"Halloween sucks."
And this just in from the Halloween House Official Spokesperson:
"Fuck Xmas!"
/nod to George Carlin, God rest his dwindling career
You’ll feel much better if you simply give in and buy whatever the hell the shelves tell you to. And hey, while you’re there, could you pick up some more Coca-cola? We’re all out. Resistance is useless!!
All I have to say about this is… HUZZAH!
Oh and Dmentd, come stop by the DAP some time.