On the first Sunday in November (which used to be the last Sunday in October), the country went back to standard time, one hour earlier than we had observed it for the past seven months. It appears we also added an extra month to the holiday shopping season.
Sure, some places like Hallmark start putting ornaments on display in July to lure desirous collectors and send shivers down the trunks of nascent fir trees in forests everywhere. Christmas in July offers us that early taste of the winter experience at a time when the summer sun is toasting us. Somebody apparently felt that we needed more than the usual allotment, and the media and malls happily obliged. They erect banners with festive words like “Joy” and “Merry” scrolled on gilt with blue or red and green. Seasonal stores spring up, like Hickory Farms and Brookstone. Fake snow fills store windows. On television the commercials are already touting holiday sales. In Pennsylvania Lottery ads, snow is a foot deep and scratch-and-win tickets have gone elf and snowman themed.
The malls already have Santa Claus on duty, for goodness sake. Sure it gives men jobs in a troubled economy, and they stay warm all day in that velour and fur, but the poor fellow I saw at the mall the other day evoked pity. My friend and I were almost ready to drop our facades of adulthood and help him out of his funk by discussing whether he could listen to our lists.
Other than the poor folks who man merchandise carts in the middle of the walkways (and they get to walk away and leave “Back at 8:30” cards on their seats), Santa was hurting for business. The gilt throne where the jolly old elf would normally sit and field want lists from scores of little ones was vacant, and he was standing at the entrance to the magical world erected around the carefully placed queue ropes, simply and interminably waiting. There were kids in the mall, because Friday was a day off from school, but nobody had their list ready for the man in the red suit in the early days of November.
Then there was the music. Make no mistake: I’m a music lover, but there is something about holiday music that gets very old very fast, and if it’s starting to assault us right after October, imagine the damage it will have done before we even pop the turkey in the oven for Thanksgiving.
Let’s face it: the old standards are so entrenched in our musical culture that every song artist in the world and their old maid aunts sing them, re-do them annually, and we simply nod our heads resignedly and prepare for the onslaught. Once the songs start up, it’s a plodding race to December 26 when every shopping facility with a sound system throws their collection of holiday tunes in a box and unceremoniously locks it away until next year.
I prefer to choose my tortures.
Last week I had the misfortune of being trapped in a line at New York City’s well-traveled Port Authority bus station, waiting for one sure to be over-packed bus out of town. The staff at the terminal has added a three-part safety message which plays on a loop at the escalators to heighten the senses of harried users, and which I can recite by rote in my sleep because I heard it about 10,000 times during my wait in the queue. Sure I’m complaining about the holidays, but I would rather hear one bad Christmas song the rest of the season than that safety recording ever again in my life. Just not this early.
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