I'm currently kind of sidelined with H1N1 (I know, it's the virus everyone's talking about. I feel like such a name-dropper.) This is why the blog's been a little quiet. But I did have a thought, and I figured I should write it down before I take some more Tylenol Cold and Flu and it goes away.
The reason that the Christmas season seems to start earlier and earlier each year is because Thanksgiving just isn't an exciting enough holiday to command people's attention. Sure, we all enjoy it, but it's got no charisma. Nobody spends the three weeks between Halloween and Thanksgiving eagerly anticipating the blessed day and all it brings...it's a feast and an occasion to get together, and since that happens a lot around Christmas anyway (how many Christmas parties do you go to weeks before Christmas?) it's easy to let Thanksgiving just blend into the general "holiday atmosphere" around Christmas. Pilgrims just aren't compelling enough to separate it from Christmas, so it just becomes sort of a waypost on the way to the even better holiday to come.
What does this mean? Only that Christmas Creep isn't going to ever get any earlier than November 1st, despite some people's worries, because Halloween's got the muscle to hold its spot and command attention. Nobody's going to get out the Christmas lights when they can decorate their house with skulls and spiderwebs. (Now Halloween, that could wind up creeping back a bit. It already commands all of October, but I could see it engulfing September without too much trouble. What does September have going for it, anyway? Labor Day? Ooh, yeah, color me interested.)
Your comments will tell me whether this is insightful, or whether I should really just lie down for a while and let the medication do its job.
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6 comments:
A data point in support of your theory: Halloween is not at all a big deal in Australia, and a lot of shops do indeed put up their Christmas decorations (or "Chrissie deccos" as we call them when there are any yanks around, just to annoy you) some time around the end of October. And then all right-thinking Aussies reach for their flamethrowers and barbecue the heathen scum, because some crimes are not forgivable.
Unfortunately, I started seeing Christmas decorations, wrapping paper, advertisements, and accessories going up in mid-October this year. It took all my restraint to not blow the places up.
I think Lewis Black said it best: "Thanksgiving used to be its own holiday, not Christmas: Part I!"
I never put up Christmas decorations until 12/1, but I know I'm fighting a losing cultural battle.
I suppose this might be because Christmas' stories don't have the unfortunate genocide implications...unless Santa built his Workshop on the elves' native soil and enslaved them.
Halloween is the only thing keeping Christmas decorations going up the day after Labor Day. To be honest, that never stopped my local Macy's.
Another anecdote to back you up: In Brazil there's no thanksgiving (duh) or Halloween (although part of the media has been trying to bring it here for some time with varying degrees of sucess) and some shopping malls do put the decoration up as early as late October.
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