Holidays

The recent kitten experience has led me to a discovery about the weight of holidays. Everyone is familiar with religious holidays, and of course we all know about civic holidays. In both cases our knowledge is often limited to the first tier of festival, there are many of both types of holiday we probably are unaware of. I know that while working in Chicago I had to be educated regarding Kazimir Pulaski day.

There appears to have developed an even more powerful type of holiday, and I would venture that this is also a largely American development. But by no means is it a civic remembrance. More prominent in the US than any civic or religious holiday is the new breed, the retail holiday.

Recently I read an entry in the Palmyra Sliver about early Christmas preparation. Peg had indicated that it seemed awfully early to be thinking about such things. Interestingly, my own weekend experience would lead me to believe that in the eye's of retailers it is very nearly November. If it is, then Christmas preparation seems absolutely appropriate.

There used to be a certain metered progression toward the next holiday. Little rest stops along the way you could count on. Summer began with Memorial Day, then we had the 4th of July, and then summer would come to a close on Labor day. After than things would move apace through Columbus Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and then Christmas. Retailers would generate merchandise choices and sales campaigns linked to the next holiday cycle insuring that there would be turnover in seasonal merchandise and the possibility to renew interest in sales as the year moved on.

Somewhere along the way though somebody figured something out. It was probably someone with an MBA and they likely presented it with a Powerpoint presentation. The thought goes like this:

"For many of these holidays there is simply nothing to buy."

What good does it do for commercial entities to hype holidays that don't lead to sales. Really, what good to you is Columbus Day? If you don't sell turkeys, what good to you is Thanksgiving. Besides, it turns out a lot of these holidays are actually politically incorrect and disrespectful to some slice of the population. Although it does seem odd that the same people being sensitive about offending the American Indian (excuse me, Native Americans) in October and November seem to have no regrets about bludgeoning many demographics come the end of December.

So, what does this yield? A sequence something like: Mother's Day, Dads & Grads, July 4, Back to School, Halloween, and "Sparkle Season." I love that last one. A real triumph for politically correct Pittsburghers. All with something to buy. Interestingly it is my belief that as well as certainly helping to generate sales that this practice also plants its foot firmly on the gas pedal, accelerating the rest of us ever faster through the calendar. This weekend we went shopping for outdoorsy stuff for a picnic on Labor Day weekend. Sales people looked at us like we were deranged. That merchandise belongs to July 4, and that had ended long ago. In fact we had also mostly missed back-to-school, which I guess was alright because we wanted lawn chairs and a grill not bean bag chairs and a miniature microwave oven. Each time we would walk into a store and find the spot where that seasonal merchandise would be, what did we find? Halloween candy, at least it wasn't Christmas Tree ornaments.

Seems to me that we could all relax a little bit if we would take the time to enjoy the time we're in rather than forever leaping to the next marketing bonanza.