Friday, December 7, 2012

Step Aside, Grinch

I - like many people these days - am getting sick of the hoopla around Christmas.  It's nothing about Christmas itself: it's the inescapability of it.  I've voluntarily looked at Christmas related products in stores, and participated in Christmas activities.  Yet I go a little crazy when every public place is playing non-stop holiday songs starting a month before the big day.  Worse, the start of the Christmas season is getting earlier and earlier every year, threatening to overwhelm Halloween.

But today, I saw a way we can combat it.  Ironically, it was among the seasonal display in Walmart.  There, in between the figurines from the 60's Rudolf TV special and the Kiss tree ornaments, was the thing that will stop Christmas from taking over the whole calendar. 

It was a shelf of Teddy Bears, finely outfitted in either a party dress or a vaguely Heffnerian robe, all with "2013" on the heel.  Yes, they were New Years decorations.  With more than two weeks to go before Christmas, Walmart already has the New Years decorations out.  And this is how we can win: by doing to Christmas what Christmas has done to everything else in the bottom quarter of the calendar.  So I'm calling on all natural allies of New Years Eve/Day to support them on this:  young people, football fans, partiers, drunks.  Buy any New Years favours you can find, and buy them now.  Convince retailers to get the Christmas stuff moving out as soon as possible.  After this attack from the rear, Christmas will still be an ubiquitous cultural force, but only for two weeks in early November.

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