Ok Jackasses, NOW You Can Start Celebrating Christmas Season
Because short-changing Decorative Gourd Season — and the holidays therein — is just plain wrong.
You’ll see I published this post on the day after Thanksgiving. Not Labor Day, not the day after Halloween, not even Veterans Day. It’s the day after we all sit down and stuff our faces silly with turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and quite possibly, some unspeakable culinary abominations our loved ones concocted, but we’re too nice to actually call them as such. Why? Because the day after Thanksgiving is the traditional start of the Christmas holiday season.
If you’re thinking this is yet another post about how some people start celebrating Christmas way too early, well congratu-fucking-lations, you deserve a cookie. You’re right. It is. Do you disagree with me? Well, let’s consider the evidence.
Consider for a moment, when stores start putting out Christmas merchandise. Some stores have started putting Christmas merchandise out right after Labor Day. I’ve even seen other stores put out Christmas displays on the 5th of July. The 5th of fucking July. You’ve barely had enough time to wash the sand off you from your beach vacation and these pricks expect you start decking the fucking halls? Ho-ho-ho and mistletoe and presents? In 90 degree heat? As John McEnroe famously said, “You cannot be serious!!”
I mean, why short change Decorative Gourd Season? Colin Nissan’s ode to the season we know as Autumn offers us some fantastic reminders of what this season brings besides football. To wit:
I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I’m about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it’s gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There’s a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.
“There’s a nip in the air,” indeed. And the last time I checked, fall ran from around September 21 to December 21, give or take a day or two. That means there are several holidays that deserve their due from us Americans: Columbus Day, Halloween, Veterans’ Day and Thanksgiving. That’s a whole bunch of damn holidays that fall during Decorative Gourd Season. You don’t just fucking bulldoze your way through these just to get to Christmas.
And then of course, there’s the new “tradition” of “Gray Thursday.” Otherwise known by a different name: Thanksgiving. I was driving home from work when I heard the DJ say it must have been invented by a guy. Because it means the women will leave for the shopping malls and big box stores while the men get to watch football in peace.
OK, there may be some truth to that. But, I also know plenty of men who will end up driving their partners, their in-laws and whatever shopaholics their families have to the mall as well. So no, it’s not such a good idea.
But of course, what really pisses me off about the whole idea of “Gray Thursday” is that it just builds out the altar to consumerism we’ve built in this country that much more. While The Lord God Almighty may have said you shall not have other gods before him, shopaholics can’t seem to find enough ways to tithe their earnings to The Church of Wal-Mart and Latter Target Saints.
Not to be outdone, the Nordstromites, the Macists, the Searsians and JC Pennyites will all be congregating at their respective houses of worship for their own open wallet vigils Thanksgiving night as well. Not to mention the Kmartians, the Best Buyanites and assorted Dollarians will be doing the same at their temples and tabernacles, too. I imagine Caligula would feel right at home if he were alive today to see this orgy of spending, even if the participants are clothed (or at least, we hope they are).
And if you don’t think this rush to Christmas is having an effect on other things, I’d like to point out that stores were selling Oktoberfest beer IN FUCKING AUGUST. As a craft beer fan and former home-brewer, this makes me want to kick retailers (and some brewers) in the head. You have different seasonal brews offered at different times of the year because they taste better when you drink them in their proper season. Refrigeration be damned. Just because you can make a certain style of beer year round doesn’t mean it can (or should) be drank year-round. I wouldn’t dream of having a porter or a stout at the beach, or an Oktoberfest for that matter. And I don’t have pilsners or pale ales in the fall or winter, either. They weren’t brewed for drinking then.
And besides, who the hell wants to see (and think) about Christmas when you’re in the throes of Indian Summer? Pleasant, sunny, cool, dry days with a little less sunlight than summer are not the days you should be seeing Christmas Ale on display. And it certainly shouldn’t be getting brewed in July & August to arrive on your store’s shelves in early October.
So, after all this ranting and raving (not to mention cursing), what’s my point? Well look at it this way: you don’t go to the bathroom in the kitchen and you sure as hell don’t take your dinner plate to the toilet. And so it should be with all of the Christmas crap right next to the Back to School items. That’s a combination you should never, ever see. Anywhere.
It’s simple: everything has a proper time and place to be done. And the proper time to start going apeshit over Christmas is now; the day after Thanksgiving. I even held off on publishing this post until the day after Thanksgiving, because I don’t even want to publish a Christmas-related post, a tirade even, until Christmas season.
You’re welcome.
