Two years ago, when I was but a first year columnist, I wrote a series of stories called “Battlefield Christmas.”
This installment of stories was written as a wartime report and how Christmas was taking over other holidays before they even get a chance to shine.
Well, this is not exactly another installment of “Battlefield Christmas”, but it is about something similar.
The other day, I went to Walmart with my good friend and couldn’t help but notice that when I walked in all the holiday stuff was relegated to a certain place in the store.
You’d think that with it being Oct. 3 that “holiday stuff” would mean Halloween. In all fairness, you would be kind of right.
There was a lot of Halloween stuff out, but a forest of pre-lit Christmas trees surrounded all that Halloween stuff.
It was an interesting sight to see. It was sort of like The Nightmare Before Christmas went insane and went shopping at Walmart.
I have to admit, I am looking forward to Christmas. I like the holidays.
I like that I have some time off, that my girlfriend is home for a month, that I get some free stuff and can give my family some stuff too.
This Christmas before Halloween stuff makes me anxious though. It sort of makes me feel like the future is coming faster than it really is.
I understand that that is probably a marketing ploy by various companies to sort of say, “Well Christmas is coming! It’s just around the corner! Better start buying stuff now!”
However, for me, it gives me more of an existential crisis. It makes me think in a manner more akin to: “Christmas is coming! After that is New Years, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, President’s Day…and so on and so on…until your inevitable demise.” Gee, thanks.
To be honest, it’s not really that bad. But, stuff like that really does make it hard for me to concentrate on the time that is at hand.
I’m a pretty basic guy. I like my soda cold, my Halloween in October and Christmas in December.
(As always it should be mentioned that Thanksgiving always gets the shaft between these two holidays.)
Getting back to the wartime “Battlefield Christmas” reports, I think it’s safe to say that Christmas won.
K-Mart even has a satirical not-a-Christmas-commercial.
In the commercial, a K-Mart employee says that this ad is “not a Christmas commercial,” but says that lay-away is beginning.
While all of this is happening, Santa Claus is walking around in the background.
Honestly, it is a pretty funny commercial, but a sign of the times. It seems to say, “Yeah, we know you don’t want to see a Christmas commercial, you know, because it’s not even Halloween, but here’s a Christmas commercial anyway because we can.”
Whatever, I can’t change it. You can’t change it.
It’s the machine and it’s coming to roll us over with mistletoe and candy canes.
So, in a few weeks 93.9 FM will start playing Christmas music, the advertisements will be less coy and Christmas will have announced its presence on November 1.
Maybe we should just declare Christmas its own season from November 1 – December 25.
It would be more honest and probably more on point.
Brian Laughran
Editor-in-Chief
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