Every year, it’s the same annoying thing:
Sometime before Halloween or perhaps just after, Christmas decorations begin to appear in the stores. Lights and baubles and candy canes are placed on shelves. Commercials for holiday gift ideas begin to propagate on television and the internet. Even Christmas trees, some already lit and covered in ornaments and tinsel, appear in town squares.
Every year, it seems as if Christmas starts earlier than the last, and with it comes the most annoying and persistent of all holiday traditions:
The people who feel the desperate need to make the early arrival of Christmas a topic of conversation.
Far worse than finding Christmas ornaments alongside Halloween candy or wrapping paper alongside Batman costumes is the person who must point this out with a combination of outrage and confusion. It’s as if they think they’re saying something fresh and new instead of something we’ve all heard ad infinitum.
Bits of brilliance like:
“Can’t we just enjoy Halloween before thinking about Christmas?”
“Isn’t it a little early for Christmas sales?”
“Can you believe they already have Christmas lights and ornaments on the shelves?”
Why yes, I absolutely believe it. They did it last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. Also, you commented on this phenomenon last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.
It’s like an odd version of Groundhog Day played over and over again every year. The script is the same. The sentiment is the same. The outrage is the same.
Nothing ever changes.
I’m not sure how objectively annoying it really is to see Christmas paraphernalia on store shelves in October. Personally, I have this incredible ability to ignore inanimate objects on store shelves and move on with my life, but perhaps not everyone is so gifted.
But what is especially annoying and not nearly as avoidable is the repetition of conversation, the annual outrage over these holiday atrocities, and especially the misbegotten idea that these ideas are somehow new or desired or interesting.
And it’s not over, of course. Immediately after Christmas, the Valentine’s Day paraphernalia will appear, and once again, these masters of conversational mediocrity will reappear, asking why we need to see these romantic baubles in January and declaring that it seems as if Valentine’s Day starts earlier every year, which we of course know is true because we’ve been told this one million times before.
