Tag: Christmas

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Christmas is getting longer

You’ve probably noticed that Christmas continues to get longer year after year. There used to be 25 days starting on December 1st. In 2014, it swallowed up my birthday — October 19th — with Christmas decorations and holiday music already in stores.

It doesn’t just start early, either. Now it sticks around for part of January as well. I didn’t really notice until this year that car companies’ “holiday sales” stretch into the middle of the month. Mid-October through mid-January. Four months of Christmas and growing. (Some people say there’s a war against Christmas, but if that’s the case, Christmas is kicking their asses.)

And just in case that’s not bad enough, I went to get a haircut yesterday, February 24th. They have a fridge in the back of the salon with pop, so I went to grab a Coke before I left. What did I see on the can?

A picture of Santa.

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Need some low-cost Halloween decorations?

If so, head to the Jo-Ann Fabrics and Crafts store in Apple Valley, MN.

Welcome to Jo-Ann Fabrics!
It’s mid-September, so this display is unfortunately not surprising.
Cute little costumes for all the cute little kidlets on a cute little holiday!
Why are they offering a 40% discount for Halloween decorations on September 18th?
It’s because they need room for Christmas decorations!
Look, you can count down the number of days until Christmas!
But really, isn’t Santa watching to see whether you’re naughty or nice all year?

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Merry Christmas! Love, Walmart!

Today, I decided I want to hunt down the Walmart executives and strangle them with Christmas lights. Why? Because they’re continually moving the winter holidays forward. Perhaps they weren’t the ones who started playing Christmas music in October, but they’re the ones responsible for the pain in my stomach when I was reading the paper this afternoon. (I sincerely doubt it was the peanut butter and jelly sandwich…)

On the front page, there were a few paragraphs about Best Buy now accepting electronics with screens for free where they used to charge people ten bucks. It attracted my attention because I have an old computer from the 90s that doesn’t communicate with other computers anymore. Seriously. I’ve tried to put stuff in the USB ports and the old computer doesn’t understand what the hell the thing is, just that it’s being violated. So now it’s all unplugged and sitting in my room: tower, keyboard, mouse and big monitor.

The paper said the article continued on another page, so I delved into the business section, read the last few paragraphs, then looked at the other page and discovered how Walmart is celebrating Thanksgiving this year. They were the first ones to start Black Friday at midnight. This year, they will be the first ones to start Black Friday before Friday. On Thursday at 10:00pm, they will begin selling toys and clothes, then everything else starting at midnight.

I cannot insert enough curse words to explain my frustration. This reminds me of the late night TV struggles a year or two ago when NBC wanted to push The Tonight Show back to 12:05am, meaning it would technically be The Really, Really Early Show. Things ended poorly there, but in Walmart’s case, no one’s going to stop them. No one can stop them. They’re a retail monster. Hell, this’ll probably get other companies to start opening on Thursday just to stay competitive. Regardless, if they ever start playing Christmas music before my birthday—October 19th—I’m gonna hunt down some Walmart executive and teach my old monitor how to communicate with his head.

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Did Santa leave a friend under the tree for me?

Now that Christmas is pretty much over and the orgy of capitalism known as “the holiday season” has almost passed, this post isn’t as relevant as it could have been, but I still think it’s important. In a way, I guess it’s a re-emphasis of this blog post, but I wanted to write it anyway.

To keep it short and simple, I hope that you all remembered what was really important this December. Sure, presents are awesome. I rarely turn them down unless they look and smell like flaming dog poop—a man’s got to have standards. But there’s more going on than presents. There are the people who gave them to you.

There’s plenty of stuff getting passed around and plenty of people doing it. If not for the people… sure, you’re stuck buying gifts for yourself, but that’s not the point. The point is that they’re the ones who make this time the best. Stuff—material objects—will never be able to take the place of people. At least until they build androids that can travel back in time and try to kill Sarah Connor.

But it’s the human interaction that’s the most important part of the season. Love, joy, cherishing each others’ company… that’s the good stuff, baby. So I hope you all got to spend time with your friends and family and made your lives more complete because of it. Unless they gave you flaming dog poop as a present. Then you can ditch ’em.