I haven’t written in a long while … So many things to do … I will catch up at some point … so many things to ponder and post for all the world to see, even China … but there is one thing bothering me that is timely …
What happened to the unwritten rule that Christmas came to town when Santa Claus served as the caboose to the Thanksgiving Day Parade? It’s been a couple weeks now that there have been commercials on TV for Target, Walmart and others that they’re opening Christmas presents Christmas morning … There is a local radio station playing Christmas songs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week … I think it was the Destiny’s Child commercial that I saw first and then it seemed all the other advertisers were like ‘Hey, we gotta get our Christmas advertsising out there NOW!’ … The jewelry commercial followed … Kay Jewelers I think it is with Santa buying Mrs. Claus a diamond present … While okay, let’s completely commercialize Christmas and make sure that the advertisers get the word out to shop at their place of business, it has affected the population as a whole …
When I had seen the first commercial on television, I joked with my 4 year old if he’d like to go out and get a tree now? … He was excited, but Halloween was like yesterday … He was Superman … My 7 year old was The Red Ninja … However immoral, I’ve been letting him play Mortal Kombat … Just across the street, I can see a Christmas tree in my neighbor’s living room … Driving around at night, there are actually houses decorated for Christmas … My brother tells me that there’s already the Photo with Santa places set up in the malls and stores … I haven’t even eaten my Thanksgiving turkey yet (well, sort of … we did have turkey just this past Thursday) … I guess I can understand that businesses are just trying to make money, but my kids are going to suffer from this …
When I was kid, I remember it being an agony waiting for Christmas to come … and that was when they started with the whole holiday bit after Thanksgiving … At my age now, time flies … But now since Christmas is already in the air, I can see this affecting the kids stress level … It’s going to take much too long for Christmas to come for them even though it’s being advertised every day on TV now … My wife was putting my 7 year old to bed just the other night, and he seemed upset … almost crying … and he wasn’t going to sleep … My wife asked him ‘What’s wrong?’ and he replied ‘I’ve just got so much on my mind!’ … 7 years old, and stress is keeping him up at night? This scares me …
I didn’t even touch on the politically correct way to say “Merry Christmas” in certain discount stores … “Happy Holidays” is what has to be said in order not to offend anyone … Just ignore that guy in the red suit over there …