I go out to get my mail today and what do I see staring up out of my little black mailbox but a Christmas ad from the local Micheals.
I stared at the ad. I look at the nice pre-lighted fake Christmas trees displayed on the front page of the ad. They also had displayed some nice ornament sets, which were on sale.
Then I realized…My GOD it’s not even Halloween yet! Who on earth puts out Christmas ads at Halloween?
And the grocery stores are in on it too. As I was shopping the other day for thinks like eggs, bread and milk, lo and behold in the dairy case I spotted several pints of Halloween egg nog! I thought maybe it was specially dyed orange or black or something appropriately Halloweeny, but to my surprise when I got home it was regular eggnog in a black and orange pumpkin festooned carton.
I suppose next it’ll be holly and ivy and poinsettas in the mall before Thanksgiving. Oy…
I think I"ll go drink some of that Halloween egg nog now and write out some of my Hallo-Thanksgivi-Christmas cards now. WHo’s with me?
It could be worse, you could have my neighbors. They have left their Xmas lights up for 2 years now. They put the first 3 Xmas trees in a pile in their front yard. To spruce them up, they threw a wood pallet on top of them.
At least the stores clean out the Xmas stuff once a year.
Yessiree, it’s Santa’s Little Village everyday here in the (formerly) nice suburbs.
The local drug store has a couple ailses of Halloween stuff, but the beginnings of a Christmas section too. So far it’s only one aisle, so it doesn’t hold a candle to Halloween, but come Nov 1st, Christmas will be taking over.
Oh, no! Christmas stuff, now? When I worked for CVS we didn’t put out our Christmas stuff until November 1st, and we weren’t finished until close to December 1st.
Craft shops, I think, have an excuse: If you want to make a cross-stitched stocking this year, you probably want to start in October so you won’t be staying up until 3 a.m. every night the last week before Christmas to finish it. Likewise a few rolls of Christmas wrapping paper can turn up in the card shops, for people who are mailing packages overseas; in some cases those packages have to be off ungodly early if you don’t want to take out a second mortgage to pay the airmail fees.
But that’s about it.
We had “Christmas marzipan” in our local stores on October 1st!! And the company had the nerve to claim they’ve always shipped it this early! :mad:
Now the pepperkaker are on the shelves - cookies that are damn hard to resist as they sit there oozing spicy smells from their plastic wrappings. Uh-uh. Resolved: Nothing ‘Christmas’ is entering Casaflodnak until December 1st.
SOmetime this week, Borders stores are putting up Christmas stuff. I convinced my boss to let me keep the kids Hallowe’en stuff up until it’s actually over, because at the moment, they want to pull it all down.
Ugh, runner. That’s horrible. I just don’t get (and probablyl never will) this obsessive need to start getting ready for the next holiday a month or two in advance.
They are HOLIDAYS! They are clearly marked on calendars everywhere. You will not miss them if you don’t start collecting holiday stuff 6 weeks in advance. The holidays will STILL come, even if you are out on Christmas eve seeking a HokeyPokey Elmo doll for your toddler who is convinced Santa Claus is going to bring her one.
CJ
Disneyland has been advertising their “Holiday Haunted Mansion,” which pretty much entails throwing “Nightmare Before Christmas” stuff into the normal Haunted Manison ride, for a while.
Haunted Mansion. Halloween. C’mon, you don’t have to be Bobby Trendy to realize that these two things go together. But no, on Halloween the Haunted Mansion will be all Xmas-y. Crikey.
I agree…this is ridiculous! We’ve has Christmas stuff in the stores here in NE since September! Hell, by now they ought to have the Valentines Day candy out.
Of course, I’m hoping that the stores will have the 4th of July stuff by January ! ’
I saw my first Christmas stuff in stores at the beginning of September.
I will forgive places like Michael’s for it, since there are people who do seriously crafty stuff who need time prior to Thanksgiving to get it done. I do NOT forgive, say, the Rite-Aid down the street. (Actually, I don’t remember if they have any Christmas stuff out yet, but I’ll use them as an example of the unforgivable sort of store.)
Most WalMarts go into Halloween/Christmas mode in August.
Ever see their garden/outdoor section aroun August 10th? If you don’t mind decorating your yard for Memorial day with plastic pumpkins and plastic xmas ornaments, you’re good to go.
I love Christmas and this is my first Christmas in the USA. I have spend the last two festive seasons offshore and this one I am on call but I am determined to make it a good one even if I will be away from my family. I had to forceably stop myself from buying a Christmas tree this week by reminding myself that it wasn’t even November yet - seeing kids running around Wallmart with pumpkins also helped.
Last weekend, the local shopping district started putting white Italian lights on the outdoor trees.
This morning I drove by a (private) house with a couple of Christmas figures already on the lawn. I did a double-take to make sure they weren’t ghosts or scarecrows, but no, it was a santa and a snowman.
I, too, have seen several examples of Xmas crap on the shelves in August. Me? I’m a single guy - I do what little Xmas shopping in 45 minutes on December 24th.
Back when I was a youngster, the Christmas season offically began the minute that Santa made his appearance at the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Slowly, the retail world has moved up the Christmas shopping season closer and closer to LEON day. (For those that never heard of LEON day. It is June 25th, the exact halfway point to/from Christmas. [NOEL - LEON].)
At first it was very easy for me to never patronize any retail outlet that forced the Christmas season upon me too early. Now, I only boycot places that are the first to bring it out since everyone seems to decorated the floor space way too early.
So, if you want me to buy stuff from your store from June 25 to mid November, don’t be so quick to decorate for Christmas. My personal favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. Let me celebrate that before I have to empty my bank account to pay for Christmas.
