Christmas commercialized earlier each year
By Andrew Gouty
Online Editor
Pause from your reading for just a minute to go find a Christmas album. If you have some old Alvin and the Chipmunks tracks handy, that will do nicely. Kick start your 33 days of Christmas with a commercial spirit like no other. It is that time of year again, though “that time of year” seems to grow longer, gets more drawn out and desperate every year.
Personally I’m on day 27 out of 60 or so of my holiday celebrations. I’ve been tallying by daily trips to Starbucks, but I’m forced to invent new uses for the red cups scattered all over my apartment.
UIndy is behind by modern standards. The festive lights that now dot the campus only went up last week. That’s tardy at best.
Starbucks had the gumption to wait until after Halloween to start serving the eggnog.
Many other retailers couldn’t resist the early rush. The big box stores had their wreaths and festivity on display the minute they got the memo.
I want to be at the next policy meeting when Wal-Mart decides on the date to begin their next holiday ad campaign.
In a room full of executives sitting in a board room, I will be the guy in the corner with his hand raised, saving Labor Day from advertisements that include snowmen and a red-cheeked guy with a beard. Raucous laughter will likely ensue following my suggestion, but I’d still like to try.
Christmas needs no saving, nor does it need defending. However, the changes in recent years have sparked a new but already tiresome debate about the commercial nature of the holidays.
I am waiting in rapture for Bill O’Reilly’s next rant on how secular interest groups are going to ruin things this year. Bill-O can be quite an inspiring guy, but only in the sense that college students of the proper age should find a pub that shows Fox News and drink every time he calls someone a secular pinhead.
So begins the polarized and politically natured arguments regarding holiday spirit. In the coming weeks, there undoubtedly will be a few floating lists of retail and public organizations that have replaced the references to the Christmas holiday with references to the winter season or simply, “the holidays.” Buyers beware.
Besides sounding like something out of a 1960s witch hunt led by a representative from Minnesota (I’m looking at you, Joe), the whole scenario simply makes my eyes want to roll back in their sockets. It seems prudent to remember that there are other observed holy days in the month of December. Some people call them holidays.
The point is that many American companies decided, out of respect for a multitude of religions and holidays, not to offend minority groups by referring to the winter season in generic terms that are inclusive of all faiths.
I guess that’s what bothers me about the commercialized nature that the holidays have taken on. It’s not the advance of sales campaigns and lights strung up in October.
If the campaigns detract from the moral nature of the holidays, then that’s a personal battle worth thinking about.
Think about it. Don’t repeat my mistake and write about it. I’m mad enough at myself already knowing I’ve fueled a healthy chemical fire.
Go buy your presents on Black Friday, string up your lights, and when they ring up as “holiday lights” on the register, don’t blow a fuse.
Happy Thanksgiving.
