The Holidays, Starbucks, and a bit of Carlin

[jcfiala]

It's November, which means it's time for everyone to start looking forward to the Holidays. Whether you join in on the big popular one, hang out with the candles, or whichever of the various solistice-orbiting holidays you may follow, it's the time when the stores start putting out things with Christmas trees, snowmen, and fireplaces up. Really, it's been going on for a little while before Halloween, which really annoys me and a number of other people too, I'm sure. I'm not ready to buy xmas items before Halloween, because before Halloween I'm too busy enjoying the creepy-and-gothic vibe that Halloween has for me. I may be the anti-goth, and I may not do a costume thing or parties or whatever, but I do like the whole vibe. And I'm sorry, but visions of vampires sucking the blood from nubile young things does *not* induce me to pick up an xmas ornament yet.

So, I was rather surprised when Starbucks, of all places, seemed to do it right. Yesterday they started putting their christmas-oriented items up. It's a respectible time after Halloween (if you still have candy left you bought too much), and they're not yet cranking out christmas tunes, which I'm sure their barristas (barristae?) are perfectly happy for. Just some decor, some new christmas-related food items and gifts, and some cute new Starbucks cards. Enough Christmas to make one cheerful, but not so heavy that you're looking down the barrel of the next seven weeks and shuddering in horror at how it'll feel at the end. Yay.

And as a side note: George Carlin. Can someone get this guy high again? Cause I could swear he used to be a lot more funny with his social commentary. He's becoming a bitter old guy that people like to listen to because he sometimes talks about sex, and he's not funny anymore. I think he needs to relax a smigdeon, myself.

Comments

[lupine52.livejournal.com]

I think you do one holiday at a time, I think Christmas stuff shouldn't start going up till Thanksgiving is over.

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

I would certainly like that myself.

But, you know, Thanksgiving and Christmas are different sorts of holidays in some ways. There aren't really any 'Thanksgiving' carols, no gifts to buy... there's really not a lot of preparation for Thanksgiving besides either planning a meal or planning a trip. And the motif (fall, pumpkins, turkeys) is largely shared with Halloween (fall, pumpkins, spooky).

So, given as there's not a lot to -do- for Thanksgiving, and all of the Thanksgiving decorations have effectively been available for a while now, the stores work more on the Christmas end of things, I guess. I'd rather if everyone stayed off of Christmas until after the big T-day... but I don't get to worked up about it anymore.

[lupine52.livejournal.com]

Yeah I don't get worked up about it at all either, I mean when I worked at Wal-mart the store started to get its first Christmas shipments about the last week of July and just put the stuff up as high as possible till about September when they started preppling the Garden center to be Christmas headquarters.