COLUMN: A November Ba Humbug
Nothing ruins a beautiful early November weekend packed full of napping and Guitar Hero quite like the start of the Christmas season. Yes, on the fifth day of November, I saw my first Christmas-themed commercial. It snapped me out of my normally mild, half-sedated weekend state into a blind rage.
A trip to Smith’s only furthered my anger. After seeing Christmas displays and decorations, I had to be physically restrained from doing something that surely would have landed me in jail.
But that incident wouldn’t be the last time I almost had to be physically restrained that day, because a trip to a friend’s – I should say former friend’s – apartment put me in the middle of the North Pole. Actually, they just had a small, plastic Christmas tree, adorned with lights, sitting on their table, but that was like throwing gasoline onto the fire. In normal fashion, I was about to do something rash and possibly illegal, but lucky for that tree, my friends were able to calm me down.
I will agree this level of anger isn’t healthy, but in situations like these, I feel it may have at least been warranted. You see, I’m a Thanksgiving person, so it hurts me when – in their blind rush towards the Christmas season – people forget the importance of Thanksgiving.
Turkey Day is by far the Cadillac of holidays. All you do is eat, sleep and watch football. I would challenge anyone to find something wrong with a holiday based on gluttony and the pigskin.
And how can we underplay the importance of the turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and the pies – good God the pies – pumpkin, apple, pecan, etc. I don’t understand how America, the fattest country on earth, glances over a holiday solely meant for overeating.
We need not forget the leftovers. After Thanksgiving, there are turkey sandwiches, turkey pot pie, turkey soup, turkey enchiladas and a variable cornucopia of others. What’s left over after Christmas? Well there is the nauseating aftertaste of eggnog, about a thousand little bows your mom insists on keeping and a sense of inadequacy because your friends all got what they wanted and all you got was socks, underwear and other embarrassing articles of clothing that will go straight to the DI.
Maybe some of you are stuck on Christmas solely because of the presents. You’ve gone mad. Presents equal stress – not only the stress of buying the “right” present, but the stress caused by having to smile even though the iPod you wanted turned into boxers and a Frosty the Snowman sweater. Thanksgiving has no stress, just gluttony and a turkey-induced coma during the Detroit Lion’s football game.
An overlooked aspect of Turkey Day is its lack of annoying songs about Turkey Day. I like Christmas music as much as the next guy, but you can only hear the “Carol of the Bells” enough times before it turns into the “MMMBop” of Christmas songs – something so annoying that it’s scientifically proven to cause internal bleeding and mild brain damage.
And Thanksgiving doesn’t have annoying movies connected to it either. No “Santa Claus” – sorry Tim Allen fans – or sappy CBS “Christmas Shoes” made-for-TV movies.
Being a Thanksgiving person, it may be too late for my holiday, but I’d like to give a warning to the Halloween people out there: Santa Claus is coming to take your holiday over too. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
But I guess if the goal really is Christmas in July, we may, with an increased effort, eventually start the Christmas season on the fifth of July. I did the calculations and if we started Christmas five days earlier every year for the next 25 years, we’ll easily reach our goal – and within our lifetimes. So get prepared to grill burgers to “White Christmas” and start shopping at the after-Labor Day sale. Maybe we should extend Christmas the other way too so we can celebrate it, take the first four days of July off, and start the Christmas season again.
David Baker is a junior in print journalism. Questions and comments can be
sent to dabake@cc.usu.edu.