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The Dutch town of Assen sounds like a progressive place. Its government outlawed any sign of Christmas until next month.
We have nothing against Santa Claus, we just don't
like him in November,
Lodewijk Osse told the Wall
Street Journal. Christmas is a December tradition. When
it expands, it becomes meaningless.
Had Lodewijk Osse been victimized by sophisticated American marketing, he might have said that September wasn't a good time for Santa Claus, either; this year, the fake trees adorned the chain stores long before Hallowe'en.
Traditionally, the American Christmas season began after Thanksgiving. From 1863 to 1943, Thanksgiving was generally on the last Thursday in November.
If it fell late, say on Nov. 30, this caused a shorter shopping season, perhaps depriving retailers of some sales. To help the merchants, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed in 1943 that Thanksgiving would be celebrated on the fourth Thursday, rather than the last.
This insured that the shopping season would always be at least 27 days; previously, it could have been as short as 25 days. On average, the commercial Christmas season went from 28 days to 30 days.
But it must have dawned on some clever chain that there really wasn't any reason to care when Thanksgiving Day came.
Plastic holly and Muzak carols put us in a buying mood; in that regard, we're as conditioned as any of Pavlov's salivating dogs. Given the controlled environment of a shopping mall, it is possible to promote Christmas sales in September, or even earlier.
In a regular Main Street store, we would feel some cognitive dissonance between the sight of snow-crusted winter-wrapped elves inside and the leafy trees and halter tops outside the window. But in the mall, we can't look outside, and so Mother Nature has no connection to mall seasons.
This probably explains why you can buy swimming trunks in April, but not in August, when it's easy to find a winter coat, although in February when you might desperately need a new coat, the heavy clothes have been closed out for airy summer wear.
Thus we suffer from a malady called cognitive
dissonance.
Your internal calendar says one thing; the
mall merchants says another. Psychologists say that
attempting to reconcile such disparities is the cause of
much mental illness, and it would be easy to prove that
crime rates rise in proportion to the number of shopping
malls which set their own seasons in blissful disregard of
the temperature, precipitation, hours of sunshine, etc.
Can we do anything to cure this before our civilization collapses?
The Dutch approach is appealing, but it would doubtless run afoul of our First Amendment. Restricting the display of sleighs and twinkling lights to the period from Nov. 26 to Dec. 25, no matter how socially desirable, is clearly an abridgement of free expression.
Social pressure is a possibility. Oh, you work at the
Megamall. Tell me, is everyone there too feeble-minded to
know what month it is? What's it like to be part of a big
affirmative-action employment program for the temporally
challenged? Do you really mow your lawns in February and
start your snow blowers in August? Does it ever get to you,
working in an environment-free environment?
We could try boycotts. Walk into a store, and if the interior scene of tanned mannequins in swimwear doesn't match the exterior spectacle of snow drifts and jumper cables, turn around and walk right out after letting the management know why.
Unresponsive stores could be picketed as threats to the public's mental health. The debate between the Season Restoration Front and the Greedy Destroyers of Natural Cycles would enliven radio and television talk shows.
Eventually, some major retailer would capitulate and
announce No Christmas until after Thanksgiving.
Its
stores would prosper, and competitors would necessarily
follow suit. Americans would be back in touch with the
seasons, and become sane and civil in a nation that was
again the envy of the world.
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