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Monday, November 24, 2003

 
No, No, I Will Not Sing That Song Now!
I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the proximity of Bronner's. Maybe it's that Michigan is a northern state near wintry Canada. Maybe it's the continuing overcommercialization of modern consumer culture. I don't know. What I do know is that Santa showed up at Meridian Mall on November 7, and shortly after that, I started seeing ads that radio station 105.7 had started playing nothing but Christmas carols, 'round the clock. It's insane, and prompts me to my yearly American lament:

It's not even Thanksgiving yet, people!

I am not one of those people who thinks that Christmas should only be celebrated for the traditional 12 days. I don't think the Christmas tree should be taken down promptly the day after Christmas, or even promptly the day after New Year's. I am really quite the opposite of a Scrooge. But come on. Give Thanksgiving its due. It's one of our only really American holidays, and if you ignore all the PC bitterness about how the Europeans should never have sailed over and set about destroying Native American cultures, it even has a good message behind it. According to travel statistics in the US, it is more of a traveling holiday, presumably to be with family, than Christmas. So I insist, as I have all my life, that Thanksgiving deserves its own season and should not be subsumed into the great Christmas shopping extravaganza. The day after Thanksgiving, fine, shop 'til you drop and sing Christmas carols all you want, but before that, no. I forbid it.

Of course, today we got real snow for the first time this year, sticking to the grass and covering my car while I was in class and everything, and I found myself having to quash a mental humming of "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas." I give myself the excuse that to me, Southern as I am, snow before December does make it look like Christmas to me. What's more, yesterday we spent about an hour trying to pick up a fake Christmas tree (heresy, I tell you, heresy!) for Mark's step-mother, because she wants us to haul it to the UP when we go up for Thanksgiving on Wednesday. Why she needs a 9' fake tree when living in the heavily forested Upper Peninsula is beyond me, but in any case, only half of it will fit in Mark's car, so she'll only get the bottom half of the tree this weekend. The top half will have to be shipped. And in the meantime, wandering around the store allowed me to do some rather early Christmas shopping. Who knows, maybe I got something for you.

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