Once upon a time, there were two holidays and one festival whose names evoked joy. The holidays were Thanksgiving and Christmas. The festival that preceded them was known as Halloween.
Then a frighteningly terrible thing happened – the power of mass marketing coupled with the retail engines of commerce blended them all together. Now we have one massive commercial blitz that begins in early October and ends in mid-January. Maybe we should give it a new name in keeping with what it does to the human psyche: Hallowthanksmas.
Regardless, it does seem, at least to this aging child, that there was a kinder, gentler time when we paced ourselves and enjoyed these consecutive events as separate, individual, and unique.
Back in the day, mass media wasn’t in full swing. TV was a new invention and even radio commercials were tiny tame tidbits that didn’t invade one’s enjoyment of programming. Now the programming punctuates the marketing space.
Halloween was a time to use one’s imagination, to dream up costumes a kid and a parent could make out of whatever was laying around the house. Ghosts from old white sheets, pirates with a cardboard eye patch, Zorro with a eye pencil mustache, or cowboys with a bit of rope and a broomstick horse were fun and cost next to nothing.
Trick or treating from house to house in neighborhoods where everyone participated and where safety wasn’t an issue but was taken for granted really did exist.
And no one, no one at all, was thinking about Thanksgiving or Christmas in October. We absorbed ourselves in thinking about our homemade outfits, decorating pumpkins, and eating our stash of candy slowly over the following days.
Thoughts of Thanksgiving began about two weeks before the actual day.
In the neighborhood I grew up in, people were simply glad to have the day off from work to enjoy a feast with their family and friends. It was a time to be at home together with the mouthwatering smells of turkey and pie. Simple, uncomplicated tables were laid out with cranberry sauce, stuffing, and gravy. Leftovers were a highlight in the days that followed, and a sense of peace prevailed.
And then came Christmas!
It seemed to take forever to arrive. The days leading up to Christmas morning were full of cards being sent and received in the mail, homemade gifts being hidden from prying eyes, and dreams of stockings filled to overflowing with fruits and candy. Religious celebration wasn’t a significant part of my family’s dynamic, but years of Sunday school lessons drove home the point of the holiday: the baby Jesus. The one that stays with me most today is the importance of kindness.
These three consecutive events were like waves, with each successive wave slightly larger than the one before and with Christmas being the largest. And each stood on its one merits, contained its own magic, and was enjoyed each in its own way. Now, it seems, they are melted into a hodge-podge of non-stop visual and audio noise.
A neighbor a few doors down from me seems to have made his yard a statement of the insanity – the front lawn displays witches and Santa Claus. Oh yeah, and one rather strange pink pig with wings. A final comment on “the holidays” possibly – when pigs fly.
It’s like that Tim Burton movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas. Was Burton’s intention to show how far marketing has gone in making us dance to the tune of shareholder’s value versus the value of family and tradition?
I don’t know. But what I do know is that kids today are missing out on something significant: the joy of anticipation. It’s almost as if kids don’t get to experience the gradual easing into each cold season event, savoring them as special and sweet. They, like the grown-ups around them, are swept up in the frantic pace of non-cash transactions seasoned not by sugar and spice, but by black-Friday pricing.
Give me the good old days when construction paper greeting cards were labored over on dining room tables piled high with pipe-cleaners and glitter, when baking from scratch was the only kind of baking known, and when joy was found in the simple, blissful reading of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. And, one of my personal favorites, see if you can also remember driving down the main streets of town to “see the lights.” It was considered a highlight of the season.
One person I discussed this massive holiday mash-up with said, and I quote, “Why not make it just one day? Put gifts around a pumpkin, stuff one bird, and dress up in costumes for a holiday parade that includes a Santa seated in front of a Christmas tree tossing candy corn and turkey legs to innocent children!”
No, those days are gone, at least for the time being. Just give me the good old days when October, November, and December held very different and very special occasions to celebrate the family – not the value we represent to multi-national conglomerates.
I wish we could go back in time to when everything was closed on Thanksgiving Day except for warm kitchens filled to overflowing with delicious home-cooked foods and love. Still, for the present time as the season nears, I look forward with memories that wait for me every year, ready to be unwrapped again like little gifts that cannot be bought in the Hallowthanksmas aisle.
By Marilou Newell