Sunday, October 25, 2009

Is it just me or is it getting worse every year? You know, walking into a Walgreens or Kmart in the first part of October and being met with the usual vast pyramids of candy, the costumes of the heroes de jour like molded green plastic Incredible Hulks, the long-running Spider-Man and, of course, the usual witch and vampire getups. Then there's the latest, newest, dumbest mechanical device of a bubbling caldron that issues spooky noises and screams of the tortured when you near it. You look. You yawn. You push your cart by on your way to get a roll of paper towels and some toothpaste. And then ... you see it! Not just "it," but a whole freaking aisle of it! Christmas stuff!

You're shocked. You're disoriented. You look back to make sure the Halloween stuff wasn't some Twilight Zone distortion or you're on "Candid Camera." You slowly turn your head back and yep, there it is -- interior lit Frosty the Snowmen with 120 volt wires coming out their rear ends, Rudolph the Red Nosed Chinese Reindeer, stacks of boxes of string lights and the furry Santa hats that every one of us has bought at least once.

Not to digress, but I have always wondered what opinions the millions of Taoist/Buddhist/Communist Chinese must form about us as these staples of American holiday celebrations roll by on the endless miles of assembly conveyors. From plastic nurdles (the raw plastic pellets that ... oh, never mind; read my columns on the environment) to the injection molds, to assemblage with light bulbs, cute little felt hats to the top-secret packing boxes. (If you think I'm kidding, try to repack anything from Asia once you take it out of the box. It can't be done -- at least not by Americans.) They must wonder at a society like ours that can employ millions of them to produce ... well, mercantile crap with a useful life of 30 days while they work six days a week and live like dogs for $40 dollars a week. They must either be laughing their heads off or licking their lips like jackals at the watering hole. Anyway, I am digressing; perhaps a discussion for another day?

Back to it being just October and the Halloween stuff that still has packing dust on it when the stock clerks hardly pause for lunch and then start putting out the Christmas stuff. I wanted to ask somebody where the Thanksgiving stuff was -- as apparently in their rush they forgot it -- but the manager was busy getting out the hats, streamers, and noisemakers for New Years.

Sorry, but commercialism in this particular age is eating its young. As a boy I can tell you Halloween was cool and we really looked forward to it. My parents never bought a costume for me in my life. Until I wouldn't wear them anymore, my mother made my costumes. The final straw for me was a white sheet and a paper paint-bucket helmet with a yellow poster-board beak and a red comb glued to it. I went as a chicken! A great costume, but it fell victim to my advancing years and my own contrived outfits, which generally ranged from soldiers (plenty of Army surplus in the post World War II/Korean War era) to James Dean "hoods," or whatever silly clothes were at hand.

There were no FX things, but when you yelled "trick or treat" people were usually home and there had better be treats because there were indeed tricks. The mythical favorite was the paper bag full of dog poo you set on fire and then ran like hell, yelling, "Fire!" and laughing about somebody trying to stomp it out. I never really did it, but it was fun just thinking about it.

Thanksgiving was a table decoration, great food cooked by an army of ladies and families sitting together at the table -- period. I guess that's why it's still one of my favorites, as the retailers haven't figured out how to botch it up yet.

Christmas was the big wrap-up. The finale, the big enchilada, the crescendo of the season. While it was probably excessive in its own way -- even when I was a kid a hundred years ago -- it was still a relatively simple ritual that stood on its own and included evening services at your usual place of worship.

The point is, holidays came and went in their measured time. There was anticipation, fulfillment and memories. They weren't all lumped into one bleary string of "holidaze." What a pity. As my good friend John dePoo always says, "Less is more." Otherwise, let's have one long celebration of all the holidays together and greet each other with Boogobbleho (as in Boo! Gobble, Gobble and Ho! Ho! Ho! -- get it?)

May your holidays pass in the measured joy of just being with the people you love.

Chris Belland's Hindsights & Insights column appears here on Sundays. Belland also writes a biweekly column on environmental issues, which runs in our Sunday magazine, Solares Hill. All of his previous columns are available on his blog: hindsightsandinsights.blogspot.com. Contact Chris at cbelland@keysnews.com.