I experienced a picturesque holiday moment the other day. The sky was gray. A crisp breeze was blowing through the oak trees. The leaves were falling gently. Festive Christmas music was jingling on the television. There was just one problem. It was Nov. 22, and I was trying to enjoy my turkey and cranberry sauce.
What a crazy transformation our holiday schedule has seen! It used to be (or so I'm told by those who have vivid memories of the Truman administration) that the day after Thanksgiving was reserved for a little resting, leaf raking and hiring a team of crack tailors to let out the waist of your pants. Over time, the start of the holiday hoopla has moved steadily up the calendar. Somewhere along the line, the day after Thanksgiving became a primo shopping day.
Now, of course, this development was troubling enough to those of us who like the holidays to have something to do with the religious/cultural traditions on which they are founded in the first place. But I got used to it. There is something exciting about being out at the mall with the teeming masses of fellow man that gets one in the holiday spirit. After all, if I didn't enjoy being crammed into tight spaces and spending lots of money, I wouldn't go to the dining hall.
But the extension of the holiday season didn't stop there. Circulars in the days before Thanksgiving now advertise "doorbuster" sales at many larger stores on Thanksgiving itself. Are Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray going to be stocking the sweaters now? Furthermore, the day after Thanksgiving has become positively institutionalized in popular culture as Black Friday, which sounds like something out of the Spanish Inquisition.
How has a quiet little collection of holidays in late December morphed into this prolonged extravaganza? Well, we probably must lay at least some of the blame at the feet of "Corporate America." This is the institution presumably indifferent to the meaning of the holiday and only interested in making money, led by people who live in a fantasy land where people give each other cars for Christmas. I hope I'm not the only one whose eyes roll at those commercials.
Doesn't part of the responsibility, however, also lie with us? We want these holidays to come very badly. Maybe we never lose our childhood appreciation for the holidays, that inner spirit that still wants to lie awake at night waiting impatiently for them to come. That's not so inconceivable. The mere fact that people continue to watch "Flavor of Love" is proof that maturity has not killed our inner child.
We also welcome the holidays because, in case you haven't noticed, we work like dogs nowadays. Take a look around the next time you roll into one of your classes. The people generally look worn out like reptiles that have been in the cold too long. If you have fewer papers to write in the next two weeks than you have fingers, you are one of the lucky ones. The knowledge that a sizable break is on the way is the only thing keeping most of us on life support at the moment, besides plenty of mochaccino lattes or whatever they're called these days. In our minds we're already back home, which helps us get through it all; although, it also means I've already absentmindedly stepped in front of a couple buses and a tough kid with roller blades. So a little early anticipation is a good thing.
Still, let's set a couple ground rules. The Christmas music absolutely cannot start until at least December. Ask anyone who suffers through a couple hundred choruses of "Jingle Bells" every year: Three weeks is plenty of time for those tunes to burrow their way into our heads. Those who choose to set their radios on the 24-hour Christmas stations should be placed on the list of criminals against humanity alongside the people who stick gum under chairs. And let's not have the shopping start until at least Black Friday; I want my relatives focusing on churning out the Thanksgiving goodies. I was able to walk away from the dinner table under my own power this year. There's no excuse for that.
Matt's column runs biweekly Tuesdays. He can be reached at mwaring@cavalierdaily.com.
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