COMMERCIALLY CRUNCHED CALENDAR

Written with tongue well planted in cheek and should be read in like manner!!

As if being a victim of the natural increase of velocity of the passing of time which comes with each additional birthday weren’t enough, now we also increasingly see ourselves being inflicted with the continual creep of the commercially crunched calendar.

I want to declare my official surrender! I wave the white flag! I give up! I throw up my arms! I take a knee and yield my neck in submission to the monsters of merchandizing that have taken four wonderful holidays and amalgamated them into one continuous rapid midnight shift reshelving event.

I can see calendar printers rubbing their palms sweatily together as they anticipate the increase of profits as the need for additional calendars which accommodate the change of information which has traditionally accompanied the dates of October 31, the fourth Thursday in November, December 25 and January 1.

In the crunched new world of holiday domination which has been taken over and is ruled by merchants we will no longer have to worry about what to do for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Years. We will simply shrug our shoulders and passively submit to what has creepily been invading our lives for many years: the propagandized and popularized humdrum conglomerated celebration of Neweenthanksmas.

There will, of course, be casualties as the devious crunching of the calendar continues. We will no longer have to buy a turkey for thanksgiving and a ham for Christmas since the sit down family dinner is being rapidly replaced by a quick drive through at the local cholesterol generating factory which lovingly remains open 24/7. But wait, not so fast – once again the commercializers have anticipated this eventuality and as usual are ‘way out in front of the consumer.

Having developed and made popular the Turducken we don’t have to stretch our imaginations very far to realize that by stuffing the chicken with a small ham all bases will be covered and the farmers will be able to continue barely scratching out a living. If you start with a large enough turkey and add some candy corn and hot wings as additional side dishes the leftovers should easily last from the arrival of the first Trick or Treater until well after Boxing Day and all will be pacified. Be careful about keeping the brussel sprouts more than a couple of days and the parsnips can be thrown out immediately.

Let us consider the Christmas Tree/Hanukkah Bush industry. Growers will have to hustle to buy up burned over forest lands in order to corner the market on the universal Neweenthanksmas ‘Lacquered Charcoal Decorating Remnant.’ Everyone should immediately understand how this new universal twig will satisfy the needs of all during the never-ending holiday. The ‘Lacquered Charcoal Decorating Remnant’ was once a beautiful green pine and now has the dead after-harvest look once required by the now extinct holidays of bygone years. This will not be as significant an adjustment as one might at first think, since plastic plant producers have already made deep inroads into the nonessentiality of using fresh trees made the natural way.

At first glance one might think the problem of decorations would be the most insurmountable. But, once again the clever marketeers have gotten ‘way out in front of us. For decades they have been washing our brains as they have made sure that the sale items leftover from the last holiday were shelved very close to the new stuff for the current (a nano amount of time) season which is then blatantly bordered on the other side by preview items of the newest and greatest for the upcoming season. Very subtlely (well maybe not so subtlely) they have implanted on our grey matter ‘the conglomerated decoration,’ so that we will easily transition to putting up the Neweenthanksmas decorations in August and not even think about taking them down until the end of January.

This will save some trees, since ‘Honey Do’ lists will be shortened, therefore, using less paper. Of course there will also have to be adjustments to the regulations and restrictions of some home owner associations which currently make some of their revenue from residents who tarry more than a day or two in the undecorating process. Fret not over small details. After all, all must be done to meet the manipulative managing of the merchants!

It doesn’t take much of a clairvoyant to realize that once Neweenthanksmas is well established and accepted by even the most traditional among us that Newvalenweenthanksmas can’t be very far behind.

We should all be able to see where the Mega Market Super Store merchandizers desire to take us. Have little doubt; they will not cease their campaign until they have achieved their ultimate desire of having one continuous year-long holiday with a mega crayon box of themes bleeding together as if the crayons had been left too close to the heating vent.

Enough is enough! Let it stop here and now! This madness must come to an end! We must today declare our resolve! From this day forth we will give each holiday its deserved space, separate and undefiled by that which just concluded or that which is about to be celebrated. We will gird up our loins and go forth to combat the destructive designs of those who would merchandize us into one continuous undefined yearlong Newvaleneastmemorialindepenweenthanksmas perpetual holiday!