November 21, 2005

Thanksgiving...Thanks for staying home

So I made it to my office 15 minutes early this morning. Gotta love Thanksgiving. Not for the family get-togethers or food, but for the incredible lack of traffic for the week on the way to and from work. Thanks, Austin, for staying home this week.

Of course, Thanksgivign is this Thursday, but I've got a little bone to pick. Last Friday I got a call from a buddy of mine in Houston. He was complaining (more like astonished) that a soft-hits radio station up there had already switched to their "All Christmas - All the Time" format. November 18! That's a little too soon to be singing about a White Christmas...

I explained to him that the Christmas holiday finally caved in to all of the "life begins before you're born" folks and now we're celrbrating from Jesus' Third Trimester until his birth. Woo-Hoo! We wish you a Merry breathe-breathe-push, We wish you a Merry Braxton Hicks contraction, We wish you a Merry C-Section...and look for our Red Apple Sale Flyer soon!

I wonder what would have happened if Jesus was born early and his birthday was closer to the beginning of December... or of that first Thanksgiving was in mid-December. It was nice of him to be born a month after Thanksgiving... and for Pilgrims and Indians to eat together after Halloween and before Christmas. Perfect timing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the holiday spirit and all that jazz... but I just think the marketing beast that is Christmas should wait until after Thanksgiving to start the celebration. The city of Kyle, Texas already has it's Christmas decorations out. That's a little premature if you ask me.

I've been working the last month to put together a Holiday Gift Guide of all Austin-made/manufactured/sold stuff...(look for it in the December issue of INsite (http://www.insiteaustin.com) so I understand the whole marketing aspect. I live the world... but I can't stand the fact that by December 16, I'm yelling at the TV and wishing my "ER" wasn't preempted by "A very Special Christmas" with a random B-list celebrity who nobody cared about in the first place...

So... everyone have a wonderful Thanksgiving... and let's wait until November 25 to wish each other a Happy Kwanzaa-Hanukah-Christmas-Holiday Season.

1 comment:

James Brush said...

I saw the first Christmas trees at the JC Penney's store in Lakeline Mall when stopping to pick something up on my way to ACL Fest back in September. That must be late in the second trimester!