EDITORIAL: OK, so I started this as a brief observation and turned into a rant. So that's why I've prefaced it as an editorial.
I walked into Cabela's this weekend. The entrance is a bizarre mixture of Halloween and Christmas. Right there at the front door. The customer service desk the same and the in-store pickup window the same. I told the lady at the pickup window "you've got a Nightmare Before Christmas going on here: Halloween and Christmas are battling for control." Furthermore I added that a long time ago when I did a history paper about a time long, long ago, I learned that stores would wait until Thanksgiving night to decorate for Christmas. The employees would come in late, late in the evening and decorate the store front windows and store all night. You wouldn't get Christmas before Thanksgiving. The lady said she wished that could be so. But at least there are plenty of private properties around decorated big for Halloween, despite city councils trying to fine people for those decorations. I don't hate Christmas, I love original Christmas. This faux commercial Christmas is what is offensive especially when it's rammed down our throats ad nauseam for prolonged periods, all October through end of January. Some women insist that Christmas can't end until AFTER THE SUPERBOWL. So we get it now from October 1 to February 7 then roll into Valentines Day. All holidays are so badly commercialized and sanitized. Did you know that Halloween is over? It's true. It was on Saturday from 2p.m. to 4p.m. Because holidays on any other day of the week is a conflict in the calendar of busy activities. Um, excuse me, Halloween has been around for hundreds if not a thousand years. Commercial Halloween has been going strong since the 1950s. So you're telling me you couldn't work around the actual day? That's what holidays are for, a holiday, a break, from the routine schedule. "NO! WE'RE JUST TOO BUSY!" Yeah, take a break.
yo man
