'Tisn't the Season

Really, I'm Not an Old Fart -- I Just Wanna Know Why Christmas Can't Wait 'til Thanksgiving is Done

ONCE UPON A TIME, the Christmas season was just that -- a season. Stores waited until Black Friday to hang their wreaths, radio stations played holiday music only on December 24 and 25, and Halloween and Thanksgiving were permitted to take their bows as legitimate autumnal celebrations.

Those days, of course, are gone, swept into the ashcan of history along with dial-up Internet access, cell phones that just make calls, and the Democratic Party.

One cannot say that Christmas is approaching omnipresence. It's already there. Labor Day sees the department stores quietly devoting floor space to holiday displays. By mid-October, my mailbox is bursting with handsome, weighty catalogs reassuring me that I can "order by December 23 and receive in time for Christmas!" Sunny 104.5 went all-Yule in early November; B-101 followed suit last week. It's all a bit much when I'm still burping up Halloween candy, looking forward to the Cowboys getting waxed tomorrow, and knee deep in dead, wet leaves, rake in hand.

The problem with Christmas creep is that the specialness of the season is being diluted. Every week that the season expands is one fewer week of sweet anticipation, and if you ever spent any part of your childhood praying with feverish intensity that Santa got your letter, you know how important that anticipation is. The only solution to this growing problem is to --

Oh. My. God.

I'm turning into my mother.

Mom, who's a faithful reader and will no doubt weigh in below, was already tilting at the Christmas creep windmill when I was a kid, and back then it was a fraction of the issue it is today. She'd rail at the corporate heathens if CBS dared show A Charlie Brown Christmas earlier than December 10 -- then finish baking her 14th batch of Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies, which would be safely stashed in massive Charles Chips tins until Christmas Eve. And that's to say nothing of her propensity to begin compiling her shopping list in August. Which she saw as running late.

So before my own 4-year-old starts seeing me as the stodgy, moldy traditionalist every parent is destined to become, allow me to reconsider. Umm ... let's hear it for free holiday shipping, and Thanksgiving airings of Frosty the Snowman, and buying snow globes at the Shore, and mistletoe commercials during the All Star Break. In fact, let's expand Christmas even more! Let's put Santa and Rudolph and the Three Wise Men in the Fourth of July parade withe Uncle Sam! Let's roast chestnuts over the Memorial Day barbecue! Let's take down the stockings on December 26, and hang them again on New Year's Eve!

Ho, ho, ho. I think.

Comments

[Tom Goodman]

TD, you stodgy, moldy traditionalist, you're right again!! The emblem of all this creep? The people who were making coupons available online before the stores even released them to the public and the suit by said stores to stop them. That's the spirit!!!!!!!

[Jer]

You mean bfads.net? They were just providing a service! I am soooooooo getting that 20-inch LCD TV at Best Buy for $192 on Friday morning.

[Tom Durso]

Geez, I feel like I'm channeling Dana Carvey's "Grumpy Old Man" character from Saturday Night Live ...

[Mom (and Dad)]

Funny how the older you get, the smarter Mom (and sometimes Dad) become. I really don't remember compiling my shopping list in August, but at least I didn't put up decorations, especially a tree, until after Thanksgiving. In my opinion, showing A Charlie Brown Christmas before December 10 is a "mortal sin". As far as Santa, Rudolph, and the Three Wise Men in the July 4th parade? WHAT PLANET ARE YOU LIVING ON? We can't put Santa, Rudolph or most especially the Three Wise Men anywhere except our own house, and I'm sure that will be litigated against very soon!
Happy Thanksgiving, Mom

P.S. Dad says, "Merry Ho, Ho, Ho yourself" Bah humbug!