[QUOTE=Sunspace]
So a green-and-white stocking is okay, then?
[/QUOTE]
Green and White stockings are always okay, as long as they’re accessorised properly by the rest of the uniform.
[QUOTE=Jodi]
My early X-mas pittings:
The Barenaked Ladies Christmas CD, which I just bought, is terrible – the boys are just phoning it in for most of it. I wish I had my 15 bucks back.
[/QUOTE]
I agree that most of it sucks.
But I like the God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen with Sarah McLaughlan so much it makes the rest of the album worth it.
Even when that stupid elf song gets stuck in my head.
[QUOTE=THespos]
Indeed. It’s time to stay home and avoid retail outlets at all costs.
CostCo was fucking intolerable two weekends ago. Throngs of people standing around getting stupider as they clogged the aisles, wondering whether a 15-lb. box of chocolate truffles would make an appropriate gift for Aunt Gertrude.
I haven’t been able to locate it on CostCo’s website, but there’s this thing I’ll call “The Aberration” for lack of a better term. It’s THREE pre-lit fake Christmas trees hooked up to a speaker. Press a button and the thing puts on a light show befitting Laser Floyd at the planetarium, while a band that sounds an awful lot like Evanescence thrashes out holiday tunes that will absolutely drive your neighbors batshit.
Somebody on my block is bound to get this. I’ve already decided that if and when that happens, I’m tying The Aberration to the bumper of my truck with a tow chain and dragging it down the street until friction turns it into a smoking lump of carbon.
[/QUOTE]
Just a quick request to have an un-jailed family member post the video on You Tube.
TIA
[QUOTE=Will Repair]
It’s past time, Christmas merchandise was on the shelves before Halloween.
[/QUOTE]
Labor Day, in some cases. Complete with the music… :eek:
[QUOTE=Clothahump]
…Complete with the music… :eek:
[/QUOTE]
I do NOT go out shopping this time of year without earplugs. It’s kind of shocking how irritable the Xmas earworms make me.
[QUOTE=Jodi]
Ooh, and seeing THespos’s on preview: Shit-fire, why on earth were there Eleventy-bazillion people at the mall this weekend?? The season starts next weekend, okay? Before Thanksgiving, I should be able to pick up my saline solution at Target without parking in the next county and festively standing in line for 45 minutes. Don’t you people have homes?
[/QUOTE]
Well, personally, I was at Target buying presents so I wouldn’t have to go shopping in December! I prefer to hibernate then and bake cookies and do really Christmassy stuff.
I’ve never gone shopping on Black Friday. We women refuse absolutely. Bizarrely, my dad and husband have started doing it in the last few years. They go buy hard drives and so on.
[QUOTE=SnakesCatLady]
One of the classic rock radio stations here has already gone to an “all Christmas music 24/7” format.
[/QUOTE]
in our town, it’s the top 40 station that goes all Xmas, but thankfully (heh) they start the night of Thanksgiving.
I got my first Xmas gift a couple of weeks ago–a heated throw I had offhandedly mentioned to my Mom as a way to cut down on heating oil. A few days later one shows up on my doorstep! Yay Xmas elves.
Our Christmas stockings growing up were green factory-knitted, but our grandparents got our names woven into the tops. They also featured a furry Santa beard I loved to pet as a little girl. 
Eleven years ago, I started this moronic tradition of having the kids’ pictures taken and framed every year for their grandmothers. That means that although I have discovered the joys of Internet shopping, I still have to take the children and brave the dangers of the mall, and in all these years, I still haven’t gotten this expedition properly organized. So yesterday, I rolled out of bed and started trying to dress my little angels. The boy had dress pants, but the dress shirt I’d recently bought him was far too big. I made him try on nine other shirts, only to conclude that every garment he owns is too small and faded. Fine. We’ll get to the mall early and buy him a shirt. Thank heavens the girl is dressed…no wait, she’s gotten makeup all over her white shirt (coincidentally, she never wanted to wear it in the first place). So, she’ll change! No, she can’t, nothing else matches her nice skirt. Her chest is too big to wear my clothes. Grrr! Fine, wear the goth dress your grandmas hate.
Finally, I had to call Sears to reschedule, then drag arguing children through clothing stores until we all hated the world and everyone in it.
The pictures turned out really well.
I saw a great crime report in the newspaper last week. It concerned a local woman who had all of the Christmas decorations on her lawn wrecked and her lights torn down by a vandal. The perpetrator(s) left behind a note that read simply “It isn’t even Thanksgiving yet.”
There are two–count 'em, two–radio stations in my neck of Massachusetts devoted purely to Christmas music. So whenever I’m flipping through the stations trying to find music that doesn’t suck ass, I am constantly stumbling across some awful rendition of some shitty Christmas song specially written by one of Torquemada’s nastier cousins for the specific purpose of making people spout confessions like a fountain.
Yeah, one of the three decent radio stations in this city goes all-Christmas at Thanksgiving. I hate it. It’s terrible Xmas music. And the CD player in my car is dead, so radio is all there is.
My early complaint for the year is that the crowding in stores and restaurants is starting already. Just going out for lunch will be an ordeal for the next six weeks. I don’t know where all these people come from, and I don’t know where they go back to after the season is over.
[QUOTE=Jodi]
The Barenaked Ladies Christmas CD, which I just bought, is terrible – the boys are just phoning it in for most of it. I wish I had my 15 bucks back.
[/QUOTE]
I bought that last Christmas, and rather liked several of the songs. And my husband is ridiculously entertained by the electric organ pieces. Did you get past the slow beginning of Jingle Bells? I kept skipping that one until I accidentally heard it all the way through.
Okay, my son is dating a girl with a coupla kids, so this is the first christmas in a while that we’ll actually have keeblers around. Every toy I’ve seen so far is from China, and this morning’s news said there’s no guarantee toys made elsewhere are going to be safe either, so I’m hoppin’ fuckin’ mad about that.
Yes, we can still give books, movies, and art projects. But these kids are 8 and 4. I’d like to give some toys, too! Stupid rufie-soaked toys!
I’ve been getting crap from friends and family for having never taken down my christmas tree.
It’s all my mom’s fault though. She bought a fake 5’ high tree to put in the corner of the hallway because it was just wasted space otherwise. And I liked it and over the years I have bought several more to put in empty places around the house. So last christmas after having taken down all the decorations, and even the ones on the tree itself, I decided to leave it up. I was planning on buying another fake tree to put right in that spot anyways so I thought I’d save myself some money and leave the christmas tree there.
So I guess I’ve been partially decorated since Dec. 26 2006.
I tried to find a site but couldn’t so I may be misrembering here:
Also I’ve heard on the radio that some of the department stores around southern California are going to be open on Thanksgiving day with the big savings to get a leg up on the stores that don’t start the savings until the day after.
We were out this weekend in Kansas going to the Dave and Busters, and for some reason the mall was busy as all hell. Turns out they were erecting a giant tree. A week before Thanksgiving.
[QUOTE=Shirley Ujest]
If you hang one for the jolly fat man…
[/QUOTE]
Is this a euphemism? Whatever floats your boat, you know…
[QUOTE=Contrary]
Oh yes, absolute HELL. Which made Nordstrom refreshing, even on a Sunday.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, bugger, and I wanted a Sephora run. Sigh…
[QUOTE=Sophistry and Illusion]
There are two–count 'em, two–radio stations in my neck of Massachusetts devoted purely to Christmas music.
[/QUOTE]
There are at least six radio stations in western Pennsylvania that run nothing but polka music on Sunday mornings. You try driving across that part of the state on Sunday and stay sane.
It’s the PENNSYLVANIA POLKA PARTY!! Yippity-Zee!!!
It’s worse than Xmas music. Well, actually it isn’t but it’s bad enough.
[QUOTE=Shirley Ujest]
I would like it known for the record that I cannot stand and absolutely despise the Red and White Christmas stockings.
God, those things are UGLY and lack any personality, charm or heritage.
It just screams: Made in China and I Have No Depth. and * I give up.* and *I am a TOOL! * Verily, a jackpot of tooldom!
If you yes, you. hang one for the jolly fat man, you are a splinter and I smite you! ::::::::::::::::::::gives the evil eye:::::::::::::::::::
[/QUOTE]
I was an admirer, Shirley, but you’ve driven me away with your elitist ranting. We own four of those stockings, two of which were purchased for my parents when I was little and which I felt lucky to get after they were gone and the family settled their estates, and they have great sentimental value for me.
We couldn’t afford much, we didn’t have much, and those were beautiful to me then and now.
People who can afford the time and materials can needlepoint/crochet/knit/sew/whatever their pretty-pretty stockings, but I’ll take my tacky stockings and my mismatched tree and all their memories every time.
I’m sorry, Shirley, your opinion of those stockings doesn’t justify my tone. I apologize for being snippy, but I can’t apologize for my Christmas stockings. 
I think I’m irritable because of hearing one too many recordings of Stevie Nicks mangling Silent Night.