The sleigh bells aren’t ringing, and the news is to blame. With only 41 shopping days left till Christmas, a quick channel-flip or mall walk-through will reveal that retailers are ho-ho-holding the Christmas spirit as a year marred by gloom and misfortune winds down.
This unusual reticence of advertisers-who normally are hard at work pushing the tinsel and toy trains before we’ve even thrown out our pumpkins-could be a byproduct of the general malaise the population is feeling these days. Reports of hurricanes, earthquake in Kashmir, regular gun deaths on our own streets, and terrorist acts such as the recent wedding bombing in Jordan, that grow more reprehensible with every new story, seem to have made numb our expectation for what is normally the happiest of seasons. The unofficial kick-off of the city’s holiday festivities, the Santa Claus Parade, embarks later this year than most, a coincidental bit of scheduling that fits the sombre mood.
Even the bastions of forced cheer, the department stores with their Bing Crosby soundtracks and the radio and TV stations that usually air chipper Christmas ads, have been surprisingly quiet. And although there are a few keeners with Christmas lights up and blazing, the spirit of the season, which annually emerges-snow or shine-hot on the heels of Halloween, seems generally far from everyone’s mind. With no big toy craze and nary a “Ho-ho-hold the payments” to be heard, the holiday frenzy may, for the first time, start in December like it should.
But this, as Martha Stewart would say, might be a good thing. It’s quite refreshing to watch TV or stroll the mall and not be bombarded with holiday-themed ads when we’ve barely left autumn. Could it be that retailers have finally decided to let us live our lives in peace and spare us the commercialism until a healthy three or four weeks before the holiday? Unlikely, but a nice treat for those of us whose conception of a winter wonderland doesn’t include cheesy jingles and festive discounts.
The depressing causes of this pre-holiday gloom are certainly unfortunate, but the bright side is that maybe, unlike most years, we won’t all be burnt out come December 25, ready to smash the next radio we hear playing a Christmas carol. It seems that the various end-of-year holidays all suffer from over-zealous, drawn-out anticipation, and are themselves anticlimactic and quickly forgotten. Perhaps this year, if we start the run-up at a more appropriate time, we can enjoy the holiday itself and keep the happy feeling for a few days, instead of discarding it like Aunt Edna’s fruitcake.
