14 November 2008

Earlier and earlier Christmas pageantry

When did Election Day become Thanksgiving, and the day after Election Day become "Black Wednesday"?

There is Christmas music on the radio, there are Christmas revue song-and-dance numbers on TV, and today I saw Al Roker riding the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree onto Manhattan island like Slim Pickens bull-riding the atom bomb in Dr Strangelove.

I'm OK with seeing the obviously Christmas-related TV ads starting up after Labor Day: electric razors, children's toys, jewelry. At least, I've gotten used to it, and anyway it starts small and subtle and only seriously ramps up (e.g., to luxury cars) toward the end of November. I don't remember seeing the pageantry, though, starting this early. I know the economy is bad -- jesus god do I know the economy is bad -- but I usually don't have to turn my TV off until Thanksgiving week.

Who in the early Church wanted Christians to celebrate Christmas one sixth of the year? And of all the nonsense the Puritans could have handed down to 21st-century America, why couldn't the country have held on to Cotton Mather's teachings about Christmas?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

why do you hate jesus?

Anonymous said...

or, to quote david laterre:

"the War on Christmas? didn't we win that one?"

Glomarization said...

How could I hate Jesus? Never met the guy. Now, that Paul, though, I'm not sure he and I would get along too well.

Anonymous said...

The first Christmas ad I saw was K-Mart (which I loathe) advertising its layaway plan, about two weeks ago.

Target already has some Christmas stuff up, but they haven't gone completely over the top yet--probably next week (sigh).

Actually, the ads were later this year than last year.

And, yeah, Paul was a jerk. The Gospels and the Epistles of Paul seem to speak of two different things.

Frank Harris, noted asshole and raconteur, was convinced that the "thorn in his side" of which Paul complained was impotence, hence, his hatred of women and sex.