So out of curiosity, would a graphic crucifix be considered a Christmas or Halloween decoration?
Well, it depends. If you put a Michael Myers mask on Jesus, it’s Halloween. If you drape him with tinsel and hang some mistletoe above his loin cloth, it’s Christmas.
I guarantee if the pumpkins are gone they rotted or sold out. The next crop is in a year.
Well, re: pumpkins, this was a year ago, so my wishful thinking could be clouding my memory, but I thought they had some a few days prior. (Why didn’t I get one then? Well, that was my fault, and that was procrastination.) Could have sold out–but really, it was the massive amount of Christmas decorations on the day before Halloween that bothered me about it, not my lack of pumpkin. Also, I recalled my family buying pumpkins the day of Halloween when I was little, routinely–but again, wishful thinking is a possibility there. It’s like there were evil little minions lurking in the shadows, just waiting to overdose the unsuspecting public on over-jolly Christmas junk.
That’s what really gets me about it, and the symptoms are just so easy to bitch about, I guess. This is something that is a source of fond memories from my childhood–decorating for Christmas–and even if I try to avoid it until December, it’s still there and by the time December rolls around, I’m already tired of it all. It takes the fun of buying shiny ribbon and listening to carols and making cookies and decorating with lights and turns it into “BUY BUY BUY BUY crappy jingle BUY BUY BUY” and it saps my energy. Buying gifts year round and saving them makes perfect sense, but buying small consumables like wrapping paper and ribbons or small things like a new ornament or a Santa shaped cookie cutter are part of the enjoyment–but if they’re available for 1/4 of the year, they stop being special.
As a consumer, it seems like businesses are shooting themselves in the foot with poor planning. Part of the appeal of the winter holiday season, to me anyway, is its exclusivity, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. It’s not an easy position to be in, I’m sure. They’ve got massive demand and limited space and an increasingly cynical customer base. I don’t envy them. But also, I don’t want to be assaulted with Christmas carols and huge shiny displays before Thanksgiving. They may put them out there just because it’s better to try to sell it than have it taking space in the warehouse and eating into the profits, but once it’s out there, they try to market it with a fabricated happy holiday feeling that isn’t there, and it’s just so obvious and plastic and fake. I can take marketing that’s obvious and plastic, (I am an average American :p) if it amuses me or reaches me somehow, but being hit over the head with it, week after week when I just need to buy some milk and bread and laundry detergent is horrible.