I remember a time when it was considered tacky to put up your Xmas decorations before Thanksgiving — the invention of Black Friday by the stores was the starting bell to signal when you should let slip the rabid dogs of capitalism. Now it’s basically all of November, and I’ve seen incursions into October. Christmas displays before Hallowe’en aren’t just graceless and kitschy, it’s a sign that you’re obsessive and intrusive. Stop it now.
Besides, what with the pandemic and all the supply chain problems and rampant cost-cutting by employers, only the millionaires and billionaires will be celebrating Capitalist Christmas. The rest of us will be shunning the shopping malls and having a quiet holiday with family at home. Which sounds rather nice, actually.
(Related: there’s a house in my neighborhood that goes all out with giant inflatable decorations in their yard. They know what they’re doing: the day after Hallowe’en, all the monsters and tombstones and skeletons are whisked away into storage, and the inflatable turkeys appear. The day after Thanksgiving, ziiiiip! the turkeys go away and Santa starts bobbing over their lawn. Calendars exist, use them.)
I used to get annoyed about early Xmas celebrations. Nowadays, considering the state of the world, I’m fine with letting people find their joy where they can find it.
Here in the UK we’ve been getting Xmas TV ads since mid-October. I think they’re trying to get us to “do” an early Christmas; as Boris Johnson has said there will be no lockdown over the holiday period, everyone knows there will be a lockdown over Christmas.
Christmas displays before Hallowe’en aren’t just graceless and kitschy, it’s a sign that you’re obsessive and intrusive.
They’re also a sign that many businesses depend on Christmas spending — in some cases counting on Christmas for about half of each year’s revenue.
I saw the first Christmas decorations in my area this morning. At least they waited until after Halloween, I guess.
The War on Halloween was a disappointment this year.
I didn’t see anything from the christofascists about how it opens the doors (what doors and where are they) to demons and witches and whatever else they hate about Halloween.
I didn’t even bother to look.
The fundie xians are more interested these days in their War on Covid-19 Virus Vaccines and their War on American Democracy.
At least the stakes are real and higher than keeping imaginary demons out in the cold.
In their War on Covid-19 Virus Vaccines, they fight an invisible virus unarmed and end up sick, some dead in the hospital on ventilators, and many permanently disabled.
It’s too early for the War on Xmas.
So far, all that is scheduled for my elite special forces group is sending out Holiday cards.
I heard Silver Bells the day after Halloween. NOT COOL! Let me have my fucking November before drowning me in X-Mas garbage.
This year, I saw a Christmas-themed Taco Bell commercial in the end of August. Christmas needs to go away. It’s overstayed its welcome and it needs to be stopped.
I dunno, as someone who quite enjoys mincemeat and pumpkin pie, as well as fruit cake, I can hang with extending the culinary portions of the program.
As the rampant buying is going to remain blunted, due to supply chain disruptions, attempts to have January incursions are now understandable.
Back in the mists of time, the “kick off” for Xmas season was the Santa Claus float at the tail end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Since–back then–all the stores were closed that day, the commercial push began on the next day, now known as “Black Friday”.
wzrd1@8
Maybe we can invent a new tradition of buying each other NFTs. They’re completely worthless, but so is a lot of the physical bric-a-brac that gets exchanged.
Oh, it’s much worse than you think.
One of my neighbors here, in the capital of Fruits-and-Nuts Country, is a house-converted-to-real-estate-management-office. Since I’m doing (and managing) renovations here, I often talk to the contracted maintenance guys there while we’re lugging stuff to and from the skips. As it turns out, there’s a fairly widespread discount among hired-out-external-maintenance community around here: If you’re hiring out putting up Xmas lights, there’s a 30% discount for doing it before Halloween. That’s… eeeeeevil.
I used to walk past a pub when I was in that London (got fed up of dickheads pushing my motorbikes over ,so a five minute walk every morning and evening to a garage ) ,they had two banners they use to put up .
One was Check out our sizzling steaks ,Jan to August , the other one was Book early for xmas ,from Sept to Jan .
@2 Do you remember a few years back when Tesco started using ,gasp ,Muslim ,and or black actors in their xmas tv adverts ?
The amount of hankie clutching that that caused .
The racists succesfully misrepresented CRT to win a governor election so the racism may be re-ignited for this years’ pseudo-war in Christmas.
If it worked once , it will be used elsewhere.
I was seeing Halloween candy in stores at the end of July.
Never mind the war on christmas, the big things right now are Critical Race Theory and The Steal (of Drumps victory).
The war on Christmas is getting old, like the liberal Death Panels and the Welfare Queens. Those concepts were useful to manipulate the rubes, but it is time to move on to , er… the Leprechaun conspiracy* or the Liberal pedophile conspiracy.
.
*from the film Oops, Apocalypse.
David @13 yes I remember that well. All the gammon were posting “you can’t see a white face on British telly any more” as if it were a) true and b) necessarily a bad thing.
@17 Yeah ,and now the bastard tories have given orders to the BBC to concentrate on all things British .So no more foreign language films ,not that there were all that many .
PS ,did your see the news about owen patterson quitting as a tory MP ?
PPS.
Talking of foreign film ,anyone out there seen an Italian Film called Volere volare?
I recorded it when it was on Channel 4 ,over twenty years ago ,very funny film .
It is on DVD ,but not with English language subtitles .
Haha apparently Owen Patterson didn’t find out that Johnson had reversed his position again and thrown Patterson under the bus until a journalist asked him “how does it feel to know that Boris no longer supports you?”
@19 He is leaving the cruel world of politics ,haha .
Ten to one he will get a knighthood out of it .
Of course the dim tory voters of North Shropshire will
vote for another tory at the by-election .