Must remember: just because the mall is the CLOSEST place to grab lunch doesn’t make it the BEST place, esp. 3 days before Christmas.
Tag: Holidays
Holiday Seasons: Then and Now
When I was a kid, I remember the last few months of the year broke down like this:
- Back to School in early-to-mid September
- Halloween for the second half of October
- Thanksgiving for the second half of November
- Christmas in December
- New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day
These days it seems more like this:
- Back to school in August (July, really — as soon as the Independence Day merchandise goes on clearance.)
- Some weird mix of Oktoberfest, Halloween, and Thanksgiving as “Autumn” or “Harvest” or some such thing covering all of September and October, resolving into Halloween specifically for the last week.
- Christmas from November through December, with a short break for Thanksgiving
- New Year’s
Everything’s crept earlier. There aren’t any breaks between seasons. And Christmas has swallowed up Thanksgiving as if it were merely an appetizer for the main meal.
Seriously… can’t we let Halloween be Halloween? And let Thanksgiving be Thanksgiving? And let Christmas be something special instead of taking up 1/6 of the year?
When Christmas starts showing up before Thanksgiving — never mind before Halloween! — I always find myself thinking of the story about the little girl who wished it would be Christmas Every Day, and found out why that wasn’t so appealing after all.
Clarify and Classify
- If only the super high-tech jet fighters had identified, clarified & classified, they’d have seen the attack for what it really was.
- Good grief. “Traditional marriage” didn’t go away when gays were let into the club. It doesn’t need a discriminatory law to “restore” it.
- South Coast Plaza has Christmas decorations up ALREADY. Halloween doesn’t exist, I guess. Or Thanksgiving.
Raising the Dead
Well, when you come down to it, that’s what Easter is about. But when you put it that way, it just sounds like the stuff that most churches rail against.
Christmas Creep On-Air
Went to lunch today, and the restaurant was playing Christmas music, two days before Thanksgiving. It wasn’t entirely their fault; they were just playing KOST, and the radio station had gone into full Christmas mode.
Now, I normally like hearing Christmas music on the radio. It’s one of the few times of year that you hear a variety of music styles (many of them otherwise vanished from the radio) without playing them yourself. Though after a while it does start to grate, especially when they overplay the same few songs. But come on, at least wait until Friday!
I guess it’s official: Thanksgiving no longer exists as its own entity. We’re now going straight from Halloween to Christmas. “Turkey Day” is just the pre-Christmas get-together.
Does anyone remember the story of the kid who wished for it to be Christmas every day, and it happened, and then suddenly Christmas wasn’t special anymore?