Hell the Fuck No It Is Not Christmas Shopping Season Yet
September Christmas displays are here, and they are fucking terrible. No, no, no, no, no, no. Mid-September is not motherfucking holiday shopping season.
Mid-September is overzealous sweater season, maybe. It’s making fun of Pumpkin Spice lattes and then getting Pumpkin Spice lattes anyway season. It’s college football season, it’s closed toe shoes season, it’s election season, it’s back to school season.
It’s not fucking Christmas season. It’s not Hanukkah season. It is not Kwanzaa season. It is not Saturnalia season. But nobody told greedy retailers that.
Earlier this month, KMart was rightfully criticized for trying to get away with running an ad for holiday shopping before the autumn equinox. One might think that sort of negative consumer reaction would stop other retailers from following suit, en masse, just two weeks later. One would be wrong.
Over the last couple of weeks, people — aghast people — have been whispering about how some store or the other is carrying Christmas supplies. My mom has been going on about the local big box farm and garden supply store quietly decorating its central aisle like Santa’s goddamn workshop like people weren’t going to notice. These decorations? These blinking lights strewn amongst the faux evergreens? They’ve always been here! But I didn’t believe her, because I didn’t want to believe her. And then there was the friend who lives in Oklahoma, posting on Facebook about a local store irking residents with a late summer Yuletide push. I didn’t believe it because I didn’t want to believe it. Oklahoma might not be a real place! I told myself. I’ve never even been there!
But there were news stories beyond deniable hearsay as well. Local news stories chirping about how there’s only 100 days of shopping left until the day we’ve agreed to pretend is the anniversary of Jesus’s birth. Gothamist sent an actual person into the 34th St. Macy’s, where they actually took pictures of the eager Christmas display standing there on the 9th floor, as insistent and unwanted as an erection during a middle school math test.