I love the holidays. Big fan. It’s probably because my mom is awesome and always made each holiday feel special and – dare I say magical – when I was growing up.
And since I’m lucky enough to be in advertising, I have very fortunately been able to avoid REALLY growing up as much as possible, so my love and sense of wonder and adoration for the holidays (specifically the ones that fall between October, November and December) never really went away.
But as much as I love this time of year and do my best to will the dog days of summer forward to get to the start of what my sister and I lovingly refer to as “Hallowithmas,” (or as RetailMeNot has called OctoNovemCember) I do have a bone to pick:
What’s the huge rush????????
It seems that every year, there is a race to see who can celebrate Christmas first. I mean, Christmas commercials were airing before I even had time to reveal my awesome Halloween costume. The pumpkin I carved wasn’t even dried out and moldy before I started seeing strings of garland up in the stores. I hadn’t even finished eating my Halloween colored M&M’s before I heard my first Christmas Carol.
And, even if we put aside the fact that we’re pushing Santa before people can be adequately frightened by skeletons….what about Thanksgiving?
Sure, it’s not the most glamorous of holidays, but it’s a holiday, nonetheless. And we celebrate it by stuffing ourselves into a food coma with our closest friends and relatives – which means it’s arguably more American than even Independence Day.
(Too far? Too far…I’ll move on.)
Even people in countries that don’t have a holiday between Halloween and Christmas think that Christmas is being pushed too soon. In Canada, the retailer Drug Mart pulled Christmas music from it’s almost 1200 stores after getting complaints from a large number of customers that it was “too soon.”
I’d just like to give each holiday it’s due. And Thanksgiving – which gives most of us AT LEAST two days off from work each year – deserves a little more holiday respect.
There’s at least one retailer with me, though. Nordstrom has signs posted in their stores explaining why they haven’t rushed ahead to the December holiday:
Images courtesy of LA Times, whosaidnothinginlifeisfree.com, Chzbgr.com, lateenough.com
