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October 25, 2004
SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE MUST BE HUNG
So I did a little errand running when I left work tonight. Nothing major - actually, I started out looking for accoutrements for my Halloween costume. As I finished shopping, I happened to pass a Bath and Body Works, so I stopped in to pick up some hand soap for the bathroom. (Shut up, Doc. It's the same stuff you have in your house... so I'm not the only one shopping there.)
I went in... and realized to my horror that it has begun. By "it," I mean... retail Christmas season.
You must understand that perhaps the truest indicator of my curmudgeon-ness is the fact that I hate Christmas. I loathe the entire season. Have ever since I was a pre-teen. Something, even when I was a precocious, too-smart-for-his-britches 12 year old, just rankled me about the holiday. I find it to be little more than an extended exercise in phoniness and commercialism. And retail is one of the largest reasons why.
When I walked into Bath and Body Works tonight, the entire front half of the store was a mass of red and green displays and boxes. Banners hung from the ceiling imploring customers to "be naughty" and "be nice." And Christmas music blared from the speakers. (If they think I am cutting them a break just because it was B.B. King's version of a Christmas song and he laid down a hell of a solo in the middle of it, they are sorely mistaken.)
People... IT'S OCTOBER 25!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Christmas does not come for two more months!!! The holiday shopping season is still four weeks away! The leaves in the greater New York area have just hit their peak -- the colors are brilliant, and we're in the middle of enjoying a delightful autumn season. It's still six more days before children dress up like things that frighten fundamentalist Christians and go extorting candy from the neighbors under threat of vandalism. Why on earth would anyone in their right mind consider it appropriate to start Christmas now??? Christmas has turned into nothing but the longest Hallmark holiday -- if indeed it was ever more than that -- with the retail industry firmly in cahoots.
(Oh, and please spare me the "reason for the season" pablum-laced platitudes... there's nothing I hate more. For the doggone record, most historians and scholars believe Jesus Christ was born some time in the fall -- possibly October, but virtually 100% certainly not December 25. The "reason for the season" is that the Church's early leadership wished to coopt the pagan festivals of the winter solstice as they spread Christianity across the ancient world. It was easier to celebrate the Christian god on a day that people were already used to celebrating. So all those fundamentalist Christians who want to use the last five weeks of the year to proselytize the rest of us, I hope you realize that you're in fact paying homage to pagan ritual.)
There's not even room to list all the things I detest about the designated holiday celebration season. One has to be the utter phoniess of proclaiming a larger spirit behind a season utterly dedicated to commercialism. The raison d'etre for Christmastime is making money -- so the silly devotion to some spirit we're all supposed to have that emphasizes the unimportance of material things strikes me as egregiously phony.
Add in to this mix the fact that 99.999999% of those grinning morons in the stores or on the street who wish me "Merry Christmas" or "Happy holidays" have neither any clue who I am nor any honest care whether my Christmas is merry or maudlin; whether my holidays are happy or horrid. I could get hit by a bus on the way back to my car in the parking lot, and it wouldn't have any impact on their day in the slightest -- unless traffic got backed up even worse by the emergency vehicles attending to me. And if there's anything I disdain most, it's people engaging in phony sentiment toward me. You know what I'd really like? Someday, for some overstressed schmuck standing at the register to tell me flat out, "I don't know you, won't see you again five minutes after you leave the store, and really don't care whether your holiday is happy or not." I swear to you I would tip the person $50 simply for being candid with me.
Next, add in the fact that every musician and band feels tragically compelled to record a Christmas album. So we get "treated" to two things: one, 341 covers of the same seven damn carols, over and over and over... or two, "original music" that's even more infuriating than hearing about the stupid chestnuts in the stupid fire for the 90th time this hour. I tell you, if I never hear Wham's "Last Christmas" or that stupid Paul McCartney "Wonderful Christmastime" (which is now being played in ever more levels of Dante's Inferno now that Hilary Duff has decided to cover it) song again, it's still too late. The Christmas season is responsible for more bad music than The Cowsills and Celine Dion combined; it's time someone called that out.
Then we have the endless parade of schmaltz otherwise known as TV holiday movies. Whether it's some kid with a pair of shoes for his dying mother, or someone given a chance to live their last three days over again and be nice to people, or let's not forget the old classic plot line where some crusty, angry soul "learns the true meaning of Christmas" with the help of an orphan/a dog/Pat Boone/some poor kids/an angel/dying relative/new love interest/via an accident... there's more sap in December television than in all the maples in Vermont in November. I say, the only good Christmas story was A Christmas Carol -- and even that one was only good until Ebenezer Scrooge wussed out.
My point on all this is that my least favorite time of year is now being expanded and forced upon us all even earlier by the retail industry. Whoever the person is whose idea it was to start Christmas themse in Bath and Body Works on October 25, I'm going to find them, roast his chestnuts on an open fire until he hears silver bells and his eleven lords are leaping.
October 25. Sheesh!!
