Go ahead and walk into a store right now. Any store will do. You’ll think that you blacked out and came to a month later, having already missed the gut-busting joy of Thanksgiving and skipped right ahead to the festive merriment of Christmas.
But no, you didn’t fall into a month-long coma; what you’re seeing is real. Everywhere you look, Christmas is slapping you right in the face. Sick Santa displays stare at you with contempt, knowing full well they don’t belong out in early November but also knowing there’s nothing you can do about it. Decorations and lights litter the shelves and ground in the typical disregard shoppers have for all items. An entire quarter of the store is devoted to Christmas as the music of the holiday begins its slow process of drilling into your skull.
Worst of all, though, is that the Christmas commercials have already begun on television. Some even reared their ugly heads before Halloween. Of course, this would be somewhat easier to stomach if the commercials themselves were good in any way. The problem is that just about every commercial for a giant company is inherently stupid and nowhere close to funny, which is due to a couple reasons: 1) No one running these big retail companies has ever been accused of being cool and 2) These commercials typically have to appeal to the broadest audience possible, and the general American public has proven time and time again that it just isn’t very smart.
So these commercials are a constant stream of bad jingles, husbands typically looking like imbeciles and instances where it looks like working at a Best Buy or AT&T store is the greatest job you’ll ever have and you’ll have nothing but the best time of your life helping people find that new tablet. I’ve worked in retail during the holidays. The only thing it makes you want to do is drive an ice pick through your own face.
This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Christmas isn’t supposed to be doing this. It’s obvious that is has become an unstoppable virus and now, more and more businesses are opening their doors on Thanksgiving so the deadbeats of the world (a very important consumer segment) can get a head start on snatching up great deals and potentially clocking someone else over a children’s toy. We’re not supposed to have to deal with any of this until Thanksgiving has had its day in the sun and even then Christmas is trying to walk all over that. Thanksgiving is nothing but an afterthought now, a roadblock on the unstoppable path to Christmas and, more importantly to businesses, spending money.
As a society we’ve already lost the fight, but where are your balls, Thanksgiving? Where is your fight? When are you going to stand up to Christmas and tell it to wait its goddamn turn? No one needs to hear Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” this far in advance of the holiday, because by the time Christmas does roll around, we will only associate it with being stuck in traffic jams around the mall and people giving you the finger as you walk off with the last pair of absurdly priced headphones. Soon every Christmas song will signify nothing but despair; you won’t be able to tell the difference between “Jingle Bell Rock” and a dystopian drum march meant to keep you and the rest of the enslaved human race in line.
The Christmas beast grows larger, and unless Thanksgiving grows a pair, we’ll soon be dealing with Christmas in August. Christmas in May. Christmas for eternity.
God help us all.
