Christmas is coming. That’s right. It’s exactly one week after Halloween, and I can already hear the jingle-bells, and traffic around the Natick Collection is already beginning to get worse on the weekends. Walk through department stores, see the TV commercials, and even listen to the radio…. And you can hear it, Christmas is already right around the corner. But what about Thanksgiving? And I am still looking at the jack-o-lantern on my front porch. I work in a department store, and we already have full aisles dedicated to Christmas items. We also still have half of an aisle dedicated to left-over Halloween decorations, that was once jam-packed up until this past weekend because it finally got marked down to 90% off. An over abundance of Halloween products, and already enough Christmas products to last us a season, but something just doesn’t seem to be adding up here. Is Christmas just about the red and the green and cute snowmen now? If we’re already getting truckloads of Christmas items in now, it is disgusting to think of how much more we will hoard in the next 40-something days.
My issue is not that the holiday season seems to be starting earlier and earlier every year whether we like it or not, it is that the spirit of the Holidays have officially been lost in cute decorations, over done party’s, the best costumes, and outrageous amounts of money being spent on material items. Halloween is an excuse for money to be spent on decorations and costumes, when it is really just boils down to the candy for the kids and maybe some quality time spent with friends or family. Thanksgiving is about the food, the family time, and a chance to give thanks. There were certainly no cutesy decorations with cartoon turkeys at the dinner table when the tradition began centuries ago. And Christmas is just lost in a world of it's own. Everything from kitchen towels, to doggie Santa slippers, to ridiculously large electrically powered blow-up animals for our front yards. Here in America, you can have anything you want in Christmas-themed form.
How did we get to this point? Why are we being force-fed Holiday items that we just don’t need to buy? There is not a citizen of this country that needs to have snowmen on their coffee to-go cup. Holiday cards, tree ornaments, wrapping paper, Christmas lights, utensils, napkins, blankets, sheets, lotions, pens, clothing! People are actually buying these things already. The weirdest part of it all is that the items that the average person does buy for the Holiday season can usually be re-used, and generally does for at least one year after, or maybe even for decades after they are bought. I feel that the Holidays have become an excuse to be incredibly wasteful, for both consumers and distributers. Mass-production is an understatement to describe the amount of Christmas items a store receives in a season. If America is trying to “go green”, we certainly shouldn’t be trying to top ourselves every year in Holiday decorations to be sold. There are certainly much bigger issues that we face as a country at this point in time, but this is just an unnecessary problem to have. It is sad to see that our materialistic culture has swallowed up what should be some of the most valuable times of the year.
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