Halloween is just around the corner. You can almost taste the candy corn. Dry leaves crunch underfoot and the first cool breezes of fall are teasing us every so often. Do you take the winter sweaters out of storage yet or not? You can never tell in the South.
Picture this. You’re going as Harry Potter for Halloween. You take a last-minute trip to the mall for the final touch to your costume-a wand or Gryffindor scarf, perhaps? You walk into your local department store and the first thing you see-Christmas trees!
That can’t be right, you say. The sad truth, though, is that the elaborate, sparkly Christmas tree/ornament/decoration display in Birmingham’s Riverchase Galleria has been shining proudly and prematurely since the beginning of October, which I was very disappointed to see during a recent trip home.
It seems that this happens earlier every year, paralleling the fact that school keeps starting earlier. Coincidence? Seems like someone is setting our year in reverse, leaving us to move along at the rate we always moved, just encountering annual events earlier with every passing year.
This reflects humanity’s growing need to speed through life. We’re always looking for the easier, faster, more economical way. The quicker we get one order of business out of the way, the quicker we can start on the next bullet on our to-do lists.
Christmas trees are on display three months before the holiday. This materialistic commercialism has taken over the holidays. Not just Christmas, which overshadows Thanksgiving now to the point that it might as well not even exist, but every holiday.
The retail industry is largely to blame. Because they aren’t gift-giving or apparel holidays, Thanksgiving and Halloween are brushed off as unimportant. A recent study found that people in the United States spend approximately $3.12 billion on Halloween and $219.9 billion on Christmas. Halloween and, in part, Thanksgiving, are said, by a retail research organization, to “fill an important retail void between back-to-school and the winter holiday season.” This reduction of the holidays to a solely profit-seeking, materialistic industry is sickening.
All holidays today are merely reduced to an excuse to buy tacky decorations, receive gifts, over-eat and relax. But, in this time, what we need to be doing is realizing that Easter isn’t just a day when the Easter bunny comes to leave us candy-filled plastic eggs, the Fourth of July isn’t just a day when we barbecue and watch fireworks and Christmas certainly isn’t just the day our only concern is if we made sure to buy presents for everyone.
You have to admit that when you drive by billboards and gas stations that proclaim “Jesus is the reason for the season,” you don’t give it a second thought. It’s as overlooked a phrase as any other church sign, which usually only elicit a sad smirk from me. Did anyone catch the ones that read, “Feed on the bread of Christ-no carbs!” or “Pray or be prey”?
We aren’t really thankful. We don’t really recognize the true meaning behind any “holiday.” Today, the word holiday is virtually synonymous with vacation, and it should not be this way. It is depressing to think that most important factors in our lives-our relationships with family, friends and God-are giving way to overindulgence in petty, shallow things, or simply being overlooked because the hustle and bustle of daily life is too rigorous to allow us to stop and smell the flowers.
If we don’t change this pace now, I can only imagine the mess it will be one day. Pink and red Valentine hearts will hang beside American flags, pastel Easter eggs will be on display among piles of Halloween candy, and women will be flitting this way and that among the multicolored mess of holidays trying to get their Christmas shopping done early, no matter what time of year.
As this holiday season begins (because we all know the hectic craziness sets in around Halloween), take a deep breath, remember that each holiday is important and special for its own reasons and try not to get caught up in the commercial whirlwind.
Erin Clyburn is a sophomore English major. She can be reached at [email protected].