…is food for thought as the holidays (Christmas in the UK, and Thanksgiving as an extra added attraction for the United States) sneak up on us. The local supermarket already has a small shelf of Christmas items on sale; by the beginning of October they will have 1/3 of the store devoted to the joys of an English Christmas.
CVS drug store and Hecht’s/Macy’s department stores around here have had Christmas stuff up since mid-AUGUST. Halloween candy came out two weeks ago at Safeway.
I remember when a “Peanuts” holiday special made fun of stores for putting up Christmas stuff in July. Everyone laughed, because the Christmas season was really only encroaching on Halloween. Now, of course, it really is that bad. (I watch “Network” and weep, I tell ya.)
I think it’s a terrible sign when companies depend on the Christmas season so heavily, and have to keep extending it in desperation just to stay solvent. Something is so very wrong with the national and world economy when that happens.
Very true. It’s been going on here for years. And English Christmases are so dire that you really want them to be over rather than see reminders of them in September. Sorry about the encroachment on August over there, though.
Dire???
Yes, Dire. Capital D.
There is a run-up in which you are expected to eat many tiny mince pies, drink lots of liquor, go to lots of office and other parties and get very drunk, and shop at supermarkets 1/2 of which is turned over to tatty Christmas food, drink, and gifts.
Then on Christmas Day, there is no public transport in the entire country. At all. None. You can’t go anywhere you can’t walk or drive (if you drive, which I don’t). Taxis charge three times normal fares.
You eat a huge meal, then sit down to watch appalling TV shows recycled from Christmases past, and the Queen’s Christmas Message at 3 pm, which you watch while munching on the last of the Christmas pudding and remark on how good she looks for 80-1/2 years old.
Then there’s Boxing Day. Another holiday. Eat leftovers. Watch leftover TV.
It’s D. I. R. E.
I dunno. It sounds like the U.S. to me! The run-up is the same. Most urban centers have public transit, though, and it runs — a little — on Christmas Day. It’s what they call “holiday schedule,” which means a bus which normally comes by every half-hour will now come by every 1:15. Few taxis are working; but if you get one (after waiting an hour or ore), then the fare is the same.
TV on Christmas Day in the U.S. is the same as in the U.K.: Bad holiday shows, reruns, treacly movies, one or two parades.
By 3 p.m., the family is at one another’s throats. Movie theaters have started opening up on Christmas Day now, because parents can’t stand their kids or each other for more than six hours straight. So, they bundle the family off to the multiplex for a night out.
Boxing Day is sort of like the day after Thanksgiving here…just without the insane shopping.
Either way, I find that Christmas has just become a mass party. An excuse to drown your work-related sorrows, bemoan the fact that you spent your entire year working 14 hour days, and “party” in desperation. Don’t take time to actually have a good time or talk to people; no, just get drunk and eat too much so you can spend more on lipo next February.