This post is to throw my two cents behind Suldog’s “Thanksgiving Comes First” campaign. Bear with me as I attack this subject from a somewhat different angle.

About 15 years ago I took a trip to Indonesia to visit a friend of mine from college who was living there at the time. It was summer, and my first evening there, at around 5pm, I was shocked to find that the sun had fully set. My friend reminded me that we were basically situated on the equator, and that there were no seasons there. Sure, there’s a rainy “season”, but the length of the day never changes, and the temperature doesn’t vary widely.

We, on the other hand, are not an equatorial people. Our daylight changes with the seasons, and the temperature with it. And for most of us living here, we can trace our ancestry back to parts of the world which also have seasons. Our ancestors marked the passage of time with holidays to celebrate that we all survived yet another year. In the fall there would be harvest celebrations, in the winter celebrations to mark the return of longer days, in the spring a celebration to mark the return of life to the land, and in the summer a celebration of the longest days of the year.

Though today most of us are not subsistence farmers, we still celebrate these holidays. Not because they mark another remarkable year surviving off the land, but because they connect us with the world around us, with our ancestors, and with our childhood. Suldog really hits home when he writes [emphasis mine]:

When I was a kid, Christmas was magical. The lights were colorful and amazing, making the night a warm, bright, wonderful place to be, even if it was 20 degrees outside and the snow was up to your waist. If you’re old enough, you’ll recall that Christmas carols gave you the same sorts of butterflies in your stomach that would be associated with love at a later time in your life. Cities and towns put up decorations on the main streets, with the larger municipalities erecting lovely Christmas trees in central spots.

That feeling of butterflies is a connection with the world around you, and your place in that world. It is a sense that the world is full of wonderful things, and joy that you have the privilege to be a part of it.

Conversely, celebrating these holidays inappropriately defecates all over the celebration. When someone tries to peddle the holiday before its time, they turn the joy into a chore. They become as welcome as a third wheel on a date, spoiling the magic, wrecking the sensation.

Now I understand why some stores want to carry holiday inventory in advance of the holiday. In part there is the desire to make more money by extending the season, but they also aim to eliminate holiday inventory leftovers after the holiday. So they wind up selling early, and cleaning out early. But in the process they wind up celebrating the wrong holiday in the wrong season. At best, it’s jarring to witness, at worst it kills the holiday mood.

Home Depot is the worst offender of this in my book, and not just with regards to Christmas. For instance, try buying paper yard waste bags at Home depot in November. Can’t be done. Or snow shovels and driveway salt in February. Forget it. In their zeal to eliminate end of season inventory, they have literally shifted each season back by almost a full quarter year. It really needs to stop.

As a consequence of their zeal to sell early and clean out their inventory early, I have seen retailers sell:

• Christmas stuff in October
• Halloween stuff starting in July
• 4th of July stuff starting in April
• Easter stuff starting in February
• Valentine stuff starting in December

It needs to stop.

So to do my part, I pledge right here and now that I won’t do any holiday shopping at stores that violate seasonality. Specifically, Christmas decorations going up before veterans day (and really, they should only go up Thanksgiving week). And I hope that you will too.

I may be doing more on this front to save Christmas from idiot retailers. If you want to help, let me know too.

Tags: Suldog, Thanksgiving Comes First

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 27th, 2010 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Humor & Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.