Holiday Overkill

‘Tis the season, but no need to over-do it

Snowflakes cover the ground in a white blanket of crystal chill, trees stand naked of their leaves, the nights start early and the days are short. Winter. Along with winter comes the Holidays. Or at least the Holidays used to accompany winter.

Every year the Holiday craze seems to start earlier. This year there was Christmas decorations for sale not even a week after Halloween started. That’s obscene.

It seems people have fallen so far down in the pit of advertising – what to buy for gifts, having the right “holiday food,” having the perfect decorations – that people have forgotten the Holidays are not something meant to last for months. It’s a Holiday, day being the key word there. There’s nothing wrong with drawing them out a bit, but come on people, we’ve reached the point of overkill.

I’m beginning to despise the Holidays. People are so over the top. Everywhere you look it’s like a reindeer just threw up Christmas on everything in its path. Life-sized blow up Santas and elves, gigantic blow-up snow globes, gaudy wreaths with enough glitter glued to them to replace pixy dust for at least a 100 fairies, and almost everything you see is painted those familiar (and increasingly overused) Holiday colors of green and red.

Not to mention the Christmas carols. Is it necessary to assault everyone’s ears with nothing but those annoyingly replayed songs over and over for months? There came a point last year where if the song Silver Bells came on, I’d just leave. It didn’t matter if I was in the middle of doing something important – I’d just walk out. A person can only hear the same song played multiple times daily (when it’s not even a good song to begin with) for so long before they can’t stand to hear it.

Everyone is so wrapped up in the image – the idea of a picture perfect Holiday celebration like the ones you see in movies – that they don’t realize when they’ve gone overboard. Why not tone it down a little? It’d be nice to have the winter Holidays not look like the little girl who got into her mother’s makeup and now looks like a clown.