When I was a kid Christmas music and shopping took center stage the week before Thanksgiving, maybe two weeks before at the most. This year I heard Christmas music while shopping for a Halloween costume with my kid and have since found that a handful of radio stations have been devoted to Christmas music 24/7 since the calendar turned over to November. I don't listen to the radio at all but it's still disturbing how early people wanna force the holidays on everybody else. Don't get me wrong, I love the holidays but if we keep celebrating them earlier and earlier every year than we'll actually be celebrating Christmas in July. Not to mention it makes the whole season less special and magical because by the time the actual holiday rolls around you're already sick of hearing about it.
If you don't have any kids in your life then all of the early holiday promotion is just annoying but no big deal. But when you have kids it's a major deal because, especially in the 1-5 age bracket, they don't know that Christmas is still kind of a long ways off. All they know is that they see trees and toys in red and green boxes everywhere they go, so they assume Santa must be coming soon. Fortunately my daughter is still so wrapped up in her new musical instruments that she's barely looked up at all the decorations going up around her. I hope that lasts for another week because the tree doesn't go up until after we've had turkey in our house. I know the earlier season is all about marketing and the stores counting on getting your kid so whipped up into a holiday frenzy that you give in and buy them at least one pre-holiday toy to get them off of your back. But seriously, what's next? At this rate, we'll all be taking the kids to visit Santa while they're still wearing their swimsuits.
I dared to venture out on one Black Friday and I will never do it again. My niece was very young at the time, maybe five or six, and she of course wanted the hottest toy of the holiday season, something having to do with the whole Pokemon craze. Her parents both had to work and figured she'd just have to live without it but I, being totally smitten with this little girl, figured I may as well give it a shot and see if I could find her one. So I get up at 4 A.M. and go to a billion different stores who are all long sold out of the toy I'm looking for. Then, at around 11 P.M. when I was running on fumes, a friend who worked at Toys R Us called and said they were getting a shipment of the things in like 20 minutes. I get to the store and there is a rather large crowd waiting for them to stock the shelves and once they did, these people lost their damn minds. They were pushing each other out of the way and bowling over little kids to try and get their hands on A TOY (and yes, I was also trying to get my hands on one but, at the end of the day, it is only a toy, not like...air or anything. I refuse to knock people down in pursuit of a toy). They were insane (dare I say crazed) but I managed to grab one and start heading for the checkout. Then I hit a rack of bikes with my shoulder and dropped the toy and this little kid comes flying into my view and throws himself on top of the thing like it's a grenade. We have a minor...hell, I just tried to grab it back from him and he pulled from the other side and starts screaming at the top of his lungs (which, oddly did not seem to alert anybody). I finally wrestle it from his Darth Vader-like death grip and he yells, "Hey! That's mine!" and I told him I did not think so and was preparing to head for the door when the little maniac grabbed my arm and bit my hand. I dropped the toy and he picked it up and moved his little legs for all they were worth. And then I did something I am not proud of but felt I had to do for my niece's happiness; I saw that the kid was gonna cut the corner of the aisle too close and slam into the same rack of bikes I'd hit and I didn't say a word to warn him, I just waited. He hit the bikes, dropped the toy and started crying and I swooped in, grabbed the toy and went home to bandage up my hand (the little monster actually srew blood, I still have the scar to this day). And you know the best part of the whole freakin' story? My niece lived with that toy for seven months, took it everywhere she went and then one day left it, '"somewhere, I don't 'member where" and we never saw it again. I love her but every time I look at that scar...*sigh* the emotional scars last forever I guess ;p
