As Halloween ends and November begins, one would expect the comforting smell of Thanksgiving food, the sight of leaves covering the ground, or even some exciting Chicago Bear games–not Santa and his elves parading through your mind day and night as a result of the constant advertisements, TV commercials and Christmas music that begin in early November and continue through Christmas Day.
It seems that Christmas comes earlier every year with the major retail companies thinking the sooner the better! As November rolled around, stores began hanging their Christmas decorations, magazines started advertising Christmas ornaments and gifts and Lite FM started playing Christmas music nonstop. Even when I enter my local pharmacy the first thing I hear is Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
Last week I was in Great Clips getting my hair cut. As I walked in I heard the end verse of Oh Christmas Tree playing and then it slowly turned into Frosty the Snowman. At first those songs are cheery and fun but after a while it felt like I was getting submerged into an unnatural mood of Christmas Happiness (the type of happiness someone can only get from eating too many gingerbread cookies). I looked outside while the music was playing Let it Snow and it was pouring down rain, not snow. Two more full months of this? Those same songs over and over and over? It’s like going through It’s a Small World at Disney World.
The repetitive music is due to corporate greed. The level of corporate greed surrounding Christmas has increased exponentially over the past few years as companies have struggled to make money. To make up for low sales, they’ve decided increasingly to use Christmas, one of the only major gift-giving holidays, to their advantage. This year, several major retailers are opening their stores for sales on Thanksgiving night. Black Friday sales have crept up to be just after Thanksgiving dessert rather than the-day-after-Thanksgiving morning. I have nothing against companies trying to make money but I would advise them to return to the old-fashioned Christmas season of generations past, beginning after Thanksgiving weekend. They won’t make all that much more money. They will just spread it out over two months.
For Black Friday this year, be sure to buy ear plugs because without them you will be enduring a month of sheer annoyance from Rudolph, Frosty and all their Christmas-time friends.
