
Contact: rwetheri@smu.edu
BOO!
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Yes, it’s that time again. I don’t mean spooking around Halloween, I mean the scary prospect of one holiday ad following another, and another, and another.
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July 4th fireworks had barely left the sales counter before Labor Day picnic planning joyfully hit the store ads. Then, the last burned wiener hit the bun on the baked-bean-laden paper plate a moment before the goblin lawn decorations appeared just inside the Home Depot entrance. I get vertigo this time of year.
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Has anyone noticed the already-urgent restaurant offerings of home-hooked Thanksgiving turkey dinners? (“Order now before it’s too late!”; “Make your reservations early!”) It’s only a day or so after October 1, for heaven’s sake! It’s probably a blessing for retailers—Boston Market and Central Market alike—that traditional food for both Thanksgiving and Christmas are essentially the same (turkey, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce): menus don’t need to be changed, grocery offerings don’t need alteration.
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Only the motifs and music will shift. We’ll shortly see telephone poles and median strips festooned with signs for installing Christmas lights, and we’ll soon visit shopping malls redolent with Jingle-Bells blasting through speakers, all while Thanksgiving dinner is being digested.
So it’s one after another. It’s not that I don’t enjoy this Bang!-Boo!-Jingle! sequence—I’d just like it to spread itself out a bit. Delayed gratification is getting a bad rap on Wall Street, impatient with profit-and-loss concerns.
I live among sugarplum faeries and I relish my time with each of their genres—and that’s the problem! I want them uninterrupted and with enough space in between. My Halloween goblins need some nurturing, and I want some time alone with my personal mummy, long after the fireworks and before being replaced with turkeys and elves. They do not play well together. So leave them all solitary, please, in their places, with spaces in between.
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Otherwise, BOO!
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Ron Wetherington
