Christmastime Already?

It's begun. And the Gap is to blame. They've got brightly-
dressed people having a snowball fight in a new commercial. To
the sound of "The Little Drummer Boy."

That would be the Christmas Carol, "The Little Drummer Boy." Not
the Week Before Thanksgiving Carol, mind you. And that means that
even though Christmas is, in a technical sense, more than five
weeks away, the annual bombardment of horrifyingly cheerful
Christmas music is on.

As I understand it, there was once a time when Christmas only
lasted one day. That had to end, though, so the Twelve Days of
Christmas song could get written. And without that song, how
could we have those hilarious parodies that are about to be
clogging up the airwaves? Of course, to be perfectly accurate,
it would have to be The Forty Days of Christmas now. Not that
I'm suggesting anything of the sort. Please don't write a new,
even longer version of that song. And if you do, please, whatever
you do, don't forward me a copy.

I suppose it's time to strap in and brace myself for the usual
suspects. Department store sales starring comical Santas. Pet
store ads with dogs dressed up as reindeer. Cars wrapped up like
giant presents. I'm entirely prepared to be underwhelmed and
unastonished by the originality of the advertisers.

Why Christmas, anyway? I can only remember one Easter commercial
("Thank you, Easter Bunny! Bawk Bawk!"), and the only Presidents
Day commercials I ever see involve appliance sales. But Christmas
must be used to shill all manner of foolishness, most of which
won't even be used as Christmas gifts.

In the interest of fairness, I should acknowledge that there may
be people who enjoy Christmas commercials. People who are
looking forward to the next month of "Jingle Bells" selling them
tires, "Frosty the Snowman" selling them Palm Pilots, and "Rudolph
the Red-Nosed Reindeer" selling them, oh, I don't know, monkey
skulls or something.

And good for them.

Me, I'll be shaking my fist at my television and shouting for the
noise to stop. Of course, that's what I do most of the time
anyway.