Sarah and I were walking in our local Smith's down the holiday aisle and were absolutely shocked to find that Easter Candy has nestled in and found a home with the Valentine's Day candy. My first thought was when was Easter? March is the only thing that made sense. So I went home and I calmly check the date of Easter on the calendar. April 24th? Mind you this was back at the first of January. What is going on? Have I missed something? How can you be selling stuff for a holiday that is 3.5 months away?I have been deeply concerned for sometime on the timeliness of holidays. I think people are getting bombarded on every commercial front with these festivities. No wonder there exclamations of weariness and overload that comes with holiday seasons.
The Christmas season especially has been extended and re-extended to allow everyone the time to enjoy the holidays. Buy your presents now so you can enjoy the holiday. Mail your cards now so you can enjoy the holiday. I think it is having the opposite effect. It use to be that you could get your tree the week of Christmas or even Christmas Eve and that was fine. Christmas shopping was meant to be done during December. Now if you haven't started before December your are deemed a "Procrasti-Santa". It is ridiculous.
We tried to go buy Halloween decorations for the Ward Halloween Party the week before Halloween and found pretty much nothing. If we left it up to the stores, our party theme would have been "Have a Gory, Hallow Christmas." Homemade paper crafts were our go to that time.
Go to the store on the week of any other holiday and try finding half way decent decorations. I dare you. I have been trying to find half way decent decorations for three years and have found that every time I am choosing between the ones that are either trite, dull, or matted due to kid saliva. You are pulling from the bottom of the barrel. If you want to buy those baubles at their peak it has to be purchased right when they hit the shelf. Which is some cases is 1.5-2 months before the festivities occur.
This whole idea cooked up in the name of commerce, to plan for every holiday months before its observance is crazy. The reasoning behind it being that it gives you time to enjoy the holiday when it arrives. I ask, how can you enjoy the holiday when you are in the process of preparing for the next holiday? We amble into this marketing snare all the time. It is impossible to not be thinking about the next festive event when you have a constant reminder of at least three holidays as you walk down the aisles of the grocery store. The amalgamation of holidays is puzzling I think it is frustrating the whole order of things. No wonder we have snow in June and warm sunny days in the middle of January. Mother Nature is confused by it as well.
There are three solutions:
1- We get rid of holidays altogether. Apparently they are just too complicated and stressful and end up not being much of a break from the hectic parts of life. If we have to plan and they consume so much of our time months in advance then why are we celebrating them. There are suppose to be a day set aside to recoup and celebrate. How are they any different than any other day in the present state?
2- We combine all holidays into four holidays that are evenly spread out through out the year. They would of course be placed in a corresponding season and then would encompass all holidays that were suppose to fall within that three month time frame. Santa would supervise the Hallow ThanksgivaChristmaca Holiday. Instead of his cap he can have witch hat and a skirt of bright turkey plumes. He could also have other embellishments that would take on other holidays. For example, at the point of the witches hat could be an American Flag for Veteran's day. For the next set of festive days, we could have a groundhog that is dressed up in leprechaun attire only its red (which fits in more traditionally anyway) and he shoots fireworks at you that bring luck, love, wealth, and black history awareness. I think we get the picture.
3- We stop all the nonsense and just celebrate holidays as they come in the season when they are suppose to be celebrated. No more overlap of holidays. This means Christmas as well. Let's actually put up Thanksgiving decorations. Heaven forbid we would actually take time to discover new family traditions by celebrating other minor holidays. Sarah and I have distributed Groundhog Day cookies and I have been known to share a Mole Day Joke. It doesn't have to be complicated.
The Free Market will eventually just have us spending all the time for this holiday and that. I say it has to stop. Our minds and pocketbooks can't take it anymore. We just have to be strong enough to resist the urge to follow in their schemes. Celebrate holidays as they come. Learn about the history and live for the headaches that they cause sometimes. Don't spread the headache out for longer than you need to. Better yet, keep it simple. It is generally better for everyone.
