Mail me. Go home.
If you are lucky, you have seen the Unadvent Calendar by the genius Simes Brown. English is a very lucky language, when he starts using it. One of his shortest entries is one of my entries for Best Use Of The Language, Ever.
Mr. Brown's view of Christmas is, however, English. It's not his fault, since he lives there. I was surprised by how similar his complaints are to my own complaints about The Holidays here, but I don't think he really appreciates how big this difference really is.
For one thing, his Calendar starts in December. He says something about things starting in October while the decorations have been up for three weeks before December. In America, Christmas (excuse me, The Holidays) starts on Thanksgiving. This is the third Thursday in November, if I recall correctly.
But if we're talking about the real heart and true spirit of The Holidays, as Simes is, then it starts in July. No, really. The big "posh" department store around here has been known to have their trees up in July. The back to school rush starts in August, and the trees are up by then. I worked in retail and the "order now for Christmas!" ads in retail, selling to the stores, start in July. Repulsive, yet true. The general public is partially sheltered from this, but It's Out There.
That's just the pagan worship of the god of shopping ("Mallmart"), though. What do the rest of us do?
First off, Santa makes an early run and power-pukes on a few houses in this area. I have no other explanation for it. No member of my species would voluntarily rush out on that weekend and staple light fixtures to everything in the yard, whether it moved or not. How else could it happen? No one needs to tie the house's walls together with strings of lights, or spell out PEACE LOVE JOY to show passing cars what you sell. I have seen evergreens in yards tied up with lights, which isn't that strange. Then they tie up the oaks and ashes and elms as well. Then the lawn ornaments. Then the boulders, and I'm not kidding. That's not enough, so they hollow out a few Carebears, reindeer, and Santas and shove lightbulbs inside the steaming carasses. There are radioactive candycanes, nuke-it-yourself nativity sets, Chernobyl carollers. You will not convince me that these are things human beings think need to be done. It's Santa, on his post-Thanksgiving "I'm feeling a bit ill" ride home.
In England, they say "Happy Christmas." In America, they say "Happy Holidays." You can't say "Christmas," as it is a religion-related word and May Cause Offense. After all, not everyone is Christian. But those poor souls are also expected to be happy this month, dammit, and buy a lot of stuff to give to people, so you have to say something. So you'll have a happy holiday, now, y'hear, or we'll want to know why. We'll probably send the boys around to find out.
Why "Happy Holidays"? "Holiday" is a religious thing too, you see. Holy day, that's what that says. Yes, it doesn't exclude any religions, but what about the agnostics? What about the atheists? What about the humanists? Are we going to exclude them? That's not very nice. That's not the spirit of Christmas. That's not what the season is all about. In fact, let's go to "Season's Greetings." Hell, we can use that one all year long, as there's always some season or other going on, isn't there?
I should be afraid. There are a lot of Americans so stupid they'll believe that, and see it as a rallying cry, the idiots. Someone should point out that they've utterly missed the point, but that will take a braver man than I am. If being politically correct, or "belief-system neutral" as I suppose the PC term for PC is, is that important, if you're so in tune with this world's needs, then you'd get that shit off your houses and yards and stop wasting the electricity on making a plastic elf's ears light up.
Americans also neglect the necessity of Boxing Day. That's right, I will be back at work on the 26th of December, and I am told it is the second biggest shopping day of the year.
While we're here, let's compare the Twelve Days of Christmas, too. In England, the first day of Christmas, I think, is...er, let me think. Oh, this is a tricky one. Um, Christmas? Oh gosh, yes, that's right. Too bad it doesn't have a more appropriate name. Of course, in the US of States, the first day of Christmas is the 13th of December. Why? Because no tree can possibly last from Thanksgiving until Epiphany, of course. The tree is dead, dry, and messy, and everyone wants to get rid of the damned thing as soon as possible. If you live in a city, this is also necessitated by the garbage man only accepting trees in the first week after Christmas. After that, you're on your own, kids. There's no way you can have the Twelve Days of Christmas after Christmas. There's no time left. Christmas is over, then.
In a way, this all makes sense if you live somewhere with winters like Minnesota. Who wants to go Christmas shopping in a blizzard? No, you want to get that done in August, mate. September at the latest. October is for real die-hard procrastinators, because you can get blizzards dumping a foot of snow on you that early. Let's get all this carolling, shopping, visiting, sociable-wintery stuff done before bloody January comes along and freezes your car's tires to the ground.
The thing I do not understand is what all these idiots are still doing in the shops in December. Must be a lot of birthdays in December, I guess. All those March weddings, that'll be it.