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“The Christmas Season” has had a specific meaning for roughly a thousand years: it’s the twelve-day period beginning at sundown on Christmas Eve (December 24) and ending at sundown on Twelfth Night (January 5). That a merchant may want to term his avaricious need to pimp merchandise for gift-giving beginning in early Fall, so that he can clear his shelves for the swimsuit season (which apparently begins on Washington’s Birthday) does not justify redefining the term. Unless, perchance, you think that Christmas has nothing to do with religion whatsoever – a conclusion seemingly justified by a lot of promotional nonsense, but erroneous.
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Dear Zealous but Sadly Misinformed Fundamentalist: “Santa Claus” is about as pagan as a menorah. The jolly old fat man began his adult career as the (fairly gaunt) Bishop of Myra, a former city in what is now Turkey, and is noted for slapping Arius in the face at the Council of Nicaea, along with some more kindly deeds towards children. On retirement, he put on quite a lot of weight, moved north, and began an apostolate among the formerly-Asatru Polar Elves. His experiments with genetic manipulation, anticipating Br. Gregor Mendel of the Benedictine Order, resulted in the breeding of aviatory cervids, including introduction of a recessive gene for erythrorhynchiosity. It is a false rumour that he supports his charitable work by shilling for major manufacturers and retailers.
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A Christmas Carol is a carol, i.e., a song of rejoicing, having to do with the event commemorated by Christmas. Songs referencing the facts that it snows in higher latitudes in the winter, that people enjoy spending holidays with family, or expressing feigned surprise regarding the fact that bells are likely silver, jingly, or mayhap tintinnabulatory, are not Christmas Carols.
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The Dickens story, on the other hand, is. Because that’s the title he gave it. Bah humbug!
I’ve finished my holiday shopping.
[ducks]
Really, I try to do all my gift buying while on vacation; there are more options then.
I used to love hectic Christmas shopping; but these days it seems my commercialism is being commercialized, and that is just too much for me.
Mismatched trees and purchased stocking are two different things.
Any decent tree has ornaments that have progressed from the place of honor when they were new, through progressively less honored stations as they aged, and finally back to the place of honor as hierlooms.
But purchased stockings? No, stockings are made from the red or green Holiday dresses that have been handed down at least twice. If your stocking isn’t made from the dress that originally belonged to your second cousin, once removed, well, then you must be…
wealthy!
It’s like hunting; people used to do that to eat.
Gotta go with the iPod. It doesn’t even have to be music–I get caught up on the podcasts I download and the audiobooks I get and whatnot. Actually, I’ve started doing that all the time.
And what is the OP’s take on this? thecamoshop.com - This website is for sale! - thecamoshop Resources and Information.
Hey, cool, you had holiday dresses! And it’s a good idea to make stockings from them.
We could one-up each other all day on who had more than the other, I suppose. But that’s not the point of the thread, and it doesn’t change my mind about the stockings any more than I expect my thoughts would change anyone else’s mind.
I live with someone who loves Christmas music. He could listen to it all year round. He did a little jig of glee when he found out that our local soft rock station is already playing it 24/7. He loves listening to it in the car when we travel together. I, most decidedly, do not.
…
We reached a truce several days later. He really is a very sweet man that way.
It’s times like this that I am glad that I am not working retail hell again. I once worked as a warehouse receiver for a large chain. We would get pounded with Christmas items from August through October. There were times when I could not even stand hearing the word Christmas. I would start getting tension headaches. The noise, the craziness, the insipid music would all flash back.
[in John Astin’s voice]But I’m much better now…[/end John Astin’s voice]
It’s camouflage. How will Santa be able to see it?
I love living 80 miles from any major chain stores, aside from the Albertson’s in the next town south, which isn’t as annoying because it’s a grocery store anyway. The local radio station I listen to hasn’t gone all-Christmas either. They are – gasp! – independent!
I have to nag my mom to send me my stocking. It was knitted for me when I was a baby, by (I think) a neighbor of my great-grandmother. It even has my name in it. It is mine.
Why yes, I am bragging, but I have managed to almost totally avoid Christmas nuttiness until this point. After Thanksgiving, it doesn’t bother me. Before, it makes me homicidal. I can only take so much Christmas music, though, except for maybe Christmas Eve.
I’m in your camp. My fondest memories are of times when we were dirt poor. I could probably one-up all of you. A stocking was something we only pretended to have. I’m talking rural Appalachia here — cooking on a wood stove and no indoor plumbing. But the love. Ah, there was so much love. 
[…embracing myself warmly…] It truly is a shame that people find indignity in poverty. I’d rather have a humble friend of humble means than a rich asshole treating me to drinks and trinkets any day.
We salute you, Vandals of Early Holiday Decorating.
I’m off to the store this AM to get my yaya’s out on the pre-pre holiday shopping ( with coupons!), thus avoiding the entire mosh pit of surly moms and crabby dads.
Wifey has announced, in much the same tone that she might use to say we’re having chicken for dinner, that we will be decorating on Black Friday starting at 9AM. I’m not putting up a fight. It’s infinitely better than the suggestion that we go to a retail establishment bigger than a kid’s lemonade stand.
If anybody around the neighborhood has purchased The Aberration, it’s not yet up on the front lawn. I’m casting a suspicious eye toward a neighbor I haven’t yet formally met. I call him The Master of All Things Inflatable. Right now, he’s got a giant inflatable turkey on his lawn, which recently replaced the giant inflatable pumpkin. I know he has giant inflatable Christmas decorations, too, which I expect to make their debut this Friday. But then I’m wondering what he’s going to do when he gets bored a few weeks into it. I imagine he’s already been to CostCo and wondered to what exponential heights he can raise the neighborhood level of Holiday Cheer[sup]tm[/sup] by installing The Aberration.
I must hasten to the plan!
I was in PA this weekend, and discovered that TWO of the local York/Harrisburg/Lancaster-area radio stations I had set in my car are already playing 24/7 Christmas music. One down here in Baltimore is already doing it, too.
I like Christmas music, too, but it’s not even Thanksgiving, for crying out loud!
To expand on my previous brief comment: I’ve had about all I can take of pop stars remaking beautiful Christmas carols into something that’s ‘hip’ and ‘cool’. Christmas carols are supposed to be traditional, dammit. If you want to make something up to the minute, go write your own song and leave the traditional carols alone.
And to the DJ that said forty people had called in asking to hear that dammed ‘Christmas Shoes’, there are plenty of stupid people in the world but do you have to indulge them?
(yes, I know there’s a button to get rid of that channel. I use it often.)
I used to believe this with all my heart. And then someone got me the Twisted Sister Christmas album as a gag gift. It’s so awful, it’s a thing of pristine beauty.
It makes me wonder whether A Very Speed Metal Christmas would sell enough on iTunes to cover production costs. What’s Marty Friedman up to these days?
And this is why the gods, or at least Tim Berners-Lee, created netradio.
On the whole, I completely and enthusiastically agree with you. I hate pop star carols.
Then I got Sarah McLachlan’s Wintersong. She doesn’t screw around with the carols too much (and there are some of her own), and they’re wonderful. It turns out that I can even enjoy Bing Crosby carols if she sings them. I’ve always disliked those. And In the bleak midwinter is on it too.
Anyway, by all means burn all the popstar Christmas CDs. Except mine.
Shit. There used to be at least a couple of religious loosy Christmas cards available at Hallmark. I don’t know if I’m sending out cards to everyone this year, and even if I am I have a bunch from years past. But I wanted to get a nice new one for my parents. I know they have some religious ones in the boxed section, but I may not need 20. Is it too much to ask that they have a modest selection of single cards about…the actual meaning of Christmas???
To Grandma, to my One True Love, to the Postal Worker, to my Niece-in-Law, from The Dog…shit. Could I get a nice religious scene and verse? Nah. :smack:
Wish I’d known! I think I threw away a ton of those cards just a few months ago.
dupe with a word fix.
I heard a commercial on the radio yesterday where some juice company was putting it’s product into Xmas carols, like
“Deck the halls with cranberry cocktail, fa la la la la”
You get it.
Anyway, one of the ditties was a woman singing,
“Jingle Berry
Jingle Berry
Jingle down my throat.”
Shit you not. I can’t hear “Jingle Bells” now.
Dear Santa
All I want for Christmas is for somebody to pull this stick out of my ass