Every year it seems, the weeks at the end of the calendar designated as the “Christmas Season” expand further and further in the direction of the blessed sunny months. Like a plodding, methodical, remorseless, invading imperial army, moving inward slowly and ineluctably towards the capital, grinding up territory with terrifying banality, the “Christmas Season's” expansion is relentless. I fear it shall not be content until it reaches the holy shrine of Memorial Day, which currently stands as an indefatigable bulwark, ushering in our unofficial beginning of summer, whether it be in long simmering Georgia or resplendently spring-like Wisconsin.
But it was not always this way. In days of yore, not even the most precocious child dared to speak of it before December, lest they incur the wrath of a Santa Clause who was still more associated with donations to the Salvation Army than frenzied 40% markdowns on garish clothing made by exploited Indonesian children; a stern, Teutonic St. Nick who really did keep two lists, who never dreamed of offering punch-card guarantees on the latest electronic do-dads, whose ire manifested itself in the form of coal lumps, who demanded to be placated not only with modesty and obedience but also with offerings of milk and cookies, and who seemed to more closely resemble a red-robed Karl M arx than some jolly, docile servant whose fetching and offering was at the beck and call of screaming, sugar-crazed children.
But that was then. Things were different. During the war there was rationing. Before that, during the Great Depression expectations were understandably minimal. If Santa showed up at all, you cried tears of joy, stared to the heavens, and thanked him earnestly for that raw wooden block with crudely drawn wheels. My friend Tom, who’s proudly pushing 90, remembers that the most amazing gift he would get each Christmas was an orange. Not an orange iPod, but the actual fruit, which was rare, delicious, and expensive.
And before the Depression? Hell, today’s consumer economy was just a twinkle in the cold, glassy eyes of early ad men. The portable vacuum cleaner was a modern fucking day miracle in 1907 when it was invented by a janitor in Canton, Ohio. His brother in-law was a saddle maker named William Hoover who, despite not being of Scottish descent, nonetheless figured out a way to make the new contraption look more like a bagpipe, and to make it sound just as sweet. A Wii and a NetFlix subscription? You’ve gotta be kidding me, right?
But after the war ended, another war began: a war against crass commercialism, spiraling consumer debt, and the guilt and shame born of unreasonable expectations. After the war. THE WAR. That’s when it all started to change. First the barrier got pushed back to Thanksgiving weekend, and the late November beachhead had been established. Then the weekend itself eroded, and the Friday after Thanksgiving yielded, in a precursor to the grotesque spectacle that is Black Friday. The dominoes continued to fall, and soon the entire month of November was occupied, marking Halloween as a new Last Stand. And by the 21st century, perhaps even sooner in some quarters, Christmas displays had begun to precede cardboard turkey cut-outs and pre-fabricated children’s costumes in stores.
Something inside you dies the first time you see a box of candy canes sitting on a store aisle with quiet confidence and indiscretion in late October.
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