The Collegiate Whirlwind

In light of Wednesday’s less-than-happy post, I thought I’d start today off with a nice little paragraph about puppies and butterflies:

They are pleasant.

Okay, there it was.  Nice and little — I liar I am not.  Anyway, I know we’re still hovering around the Thanksgiving season, and I wanted to resist the urge to write another Thanksgiving blog.  I would have succeeded too, if not for the evil that is Wal-Mart.  This blog is actually somewhat retrospective, as the idea first struck me while I was shopping for the Halloween party.  While sifting through the bargain candy, I stumbled across a true gem: a bag of discounted Resees Peanut Butter Cups!  I was ecstatic, and I turned to my roommate, barely suppressing the urge to break into a little dance.  (I was dancing ferociously in my head.  The merengue, if you’re curious.  I was the best of show!  And no, I can’t dance in real life.  Thanks for ruining my moment, jerk…)  When he saw the bag he rolled his eyes.  Before I could smack him for daring to disrespect such a wonderful treat, he pointed to the decoration on the bag that I had, in my feverish excitement, completely missed.  Reindeer.  And a sled.  Just in case I didn’t feel silly and obtuse enough, Jeff proceeded to point out the actual peanut butter cups were all wrapped in green and red foil.  In my defense, I’ve always thought green and red would make excellent Halloween colors.  Think of the possibilities: bloody grass, bloody trees, bloody sweaters (green sweaters, of course), bloody Granny Smith apples . . . um . . . bloody . . . ah, forget it.

Regardless, rushing straight from Halloween to Christmas really bothered me.  I mean, the least Wal-Mart could have done was pretend that it cared about low-income holidays.  Who’s fault is it that the holiday is low income in the first place, anyhow?  With a little creativity, their happy, little, holiday-extorting bottoms could be rolling in turkeybucks.  Exploding turkey basters, singing chicken carcasses, Pilgrim-shaped Nerf guns (the PilgrimKiller 4000’s predecessor) . . . they’re not even trying.

Seriously, though, it leads me to wonder just how far we’ve allowed our holidays to become consumed by consumerism.  (There’s a tongue-twister for you!)  It’s like Thanksgiving fell into the money-gobbing maw of Wal-Mart, never to be seen again, simply because the themes of the holiday don’t revolve around giving gifts or self-indulgence (unless you count overeating).

In all reality, this isn’t a problem in and of itself.  Wal-Mart is one store that has decided to limit it’s turkey time, and that’s their own choice.  However, the general attitude seems to be one that’s pervaded a lot of the holidays, and it goes to show just how commercialized we’ve let these special days become.  As I’ve grown up, days like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter have slowly lost some of their charm.  Granted, part of that is because I’m no longer a snot-nosed six year old drooling over the latest Beast Wars action figure or staring starry-eyed at the empty cookie jar, wondering how Mom and Dad cleaned the reindeer poop off the roof.  But even back when fifteen dollars was all the money in the world, and I thought the coolest thing ever was taking my family out to McDonalds, the commercialism was present.

Honestly, with holidays that revolve around gifts, it’s a natural function of the system.  The degree to which it’s take, however, is what got to me.  I honestly don’t remember if they hid Christmas candies with the Halloween goodies back when I was seven, but now that I’m old enough to start seeing these sorts of trends, I’m old enough to start being bothered by them.

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