Holidays

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Okay, so I walked into the store today after being underway for a few days and guess what I see right in the MIDDLE of the store. A christmas tree. It's not even halloween yet and already stores are setting up christmas decorations. In my mind this is just plain WRONG. Haven't people figured out that christmas comes after thanksgiving and halloween not before. Whats wrong with the world today. I can remember when christmas started showing up around december first not october 20th(I asked one of the clerks). I'm thinking of buying a small island where holiday decorations start two weeks before the actual holiday and disappear four days after. Anybody want to chip in on the cost and move to my island??

 

I would, only the lack of girl is disturbing .

Errr but I agree with you nonetheless this is really stupis and disturbing, I've nothing against stores that want to makes money by selling appropriate hollydays gizmos and stuff, but almost three months in advance is just plain wrong. Now would be the best time to sell Halloween stuff. Not Christmas!

 

It's simply insane.

 

I don't like that and I don't like the commercialisation of holidays and feasts. Come to think about it, I'm not a big fan of corporations and this isn't going to change unless I become a CEO of one. Oh well. Hehe. But really, I think it's overdone and shouldn't be like this.

 

It's way overdone. The first day you can use an advent calendar is the first of December, and our local Co-Op put out the chiocolate advent calendars on the first of October - that's a full two months before anyone will be using them

 

Gah, and I thought I had it bad. You'ev go me beat by 20 days.

 

Well, Sci-Fi channel is showing a 'satan-santa' movie this weekend, so maybe there's a secret plot to fuse the holidays into one massive spending frenzy . I think just about everyone hates the comercialization of holidays. If you don't please speak up.

 

Oh my, is it already time for this years version of the Christmas stuff out to early thread? Every year we have such a thread and it certainly seems to come about earlier every year.

Well, not that much earlier actually - we talked about it around November 11th last year and at that time I noted that the Christmas stuff hit stores by October 29th.

Regardless of that it is still silly for the stuff to be out this early.

 

Bloody Christmas... bah humbug.

 

N.Ireland is now starting to get temporary 'Christmas shops', These used to open up mid November, but this year they opened up early October. Eventually these shops will be open all year round.

 

i work in a convinience store, and we started selling the 1st aswell, and they are selling very good! pople are buying the calanders(with choclate for everday, it ****ing sucks, the cocolate) and why are they doing that? the chocolate will turn into dust before it even gets to december!


and yea i'm up fr your island, but what about a keg?

 

As Stan Freberg said so many years ago in his song, "I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas...", accented by the ring of a cash register--they used to ring, you know.

 

Hmm, Fancy chocolates available year round? That's not a bad thing...

 

In my house, there is a tradition known as Tree Day. Tree Day is December 1st. No sooner. It's the start of the Christmas season for us (although my g/f loves this time of year; it's summer down here). They've started putting up the Christmas decorations in stores, although the ads haven't started yet.

As much as the commercialisation of Christmas annoys me, it's the anti-denominational PC crap that pisses me off even more. We couldn't even have a Christmas Party in the university office last year because three non-Christians kicked up a huge fuss. There's a difference between religious sensitivity and religious imperialism, damn it!

 

Soon we will have year divided between X-mas and Easter shopping times. And possible both at the same time (summer?)

 

@ Cúchulainn - we have the same things. There are certain shops that open for about 2 weeks at a time for various occasions. This year they opened for 2 weeks for easter, hallowe'en and bonfire night and i expect they will soon open for christmas. The trouble is all the stuff you get from them is absolute rubbish and lasts 5 minutes but by the time it breaks the shop is gone...

 

@JSBB:

That was the point Arahar was making (according to my skewed perceptions, at least) - the commercialist hype is continuing to preceed the event by greater and greater amounts.

I think it's effective in its intent of 'reminding' us to 'beat the rush', but that still doesn't mean I like it. In fact this just illustrates the pointless greed of an intangible, incorporeal 'corporation'^1 that has no PURPOSE for accumulating this wealth away from actual PEOPLE (What, Sony wants to get a new car next month? Costco's been thinking about a vacation in the Bahamas? )

Now you can argue 'wages,' 'development' and 'shareholder return on investment' but this is all PLAYING these "incorporeal INcorporations"' game by their rules! The simple fact is assets are being taken from living people, fed through these 'incorporeals' and then some of these assets are redistributed back to other people in the form of wages to employees, fees to contractors, stock dividends to shareholders, and (alarmingly more and more often) and lawsuit settlements to plaintiffs...

And remember I said *some* - part of those assets are held by the 'INcorporation' in its own bank accounts for supposed 'expansion' and reserves against unexpected setbacks. And what is the MOTIVE for a corporation's expansion? Why, to consume more and more: "Attain greater revenue benchmarks" would likely be the corp-speke.

Folks? Everyone's worried about Artificial Intelligence - well, in a way we've already created them: corporations. The actual intelligence displayed is rather relative; they behave much like simple animals such as bacteria with a single pair of goals in 'mind': consume and grow. And the food an INcorporation feeds on? 'Money' - which is really just an analogue for a person's time and effort. In short, we take our 'work' and put it into these intangible organisms, they consume some of that and grow from it, and excrete the rest out in the forms mentioned above.

It has begun to make me uneasy to think of these 'intangible entities' taking such a big role in society, while having goals and motives that would make a dog look altruistic.

I - as stated in another thread - have a rather simplistic 'meaning of life' or credo or purpose I live by: "to be happy and make others happy, when possible." But this is whole epochs of evolution^2 beyond the "survive" goal of a 'INcorporation'.

So, Arahar? I'll see your 'seasonal' island and raise you a permanent 'hermit's hideout' like what...Kuemper(?) pines about from time to time: a luxury-appointed isolated cave with heat, light, plumbing and broadband (cuz I can't do without my mind-stimulating interaction with the people on BoM - don't wanna suffer from 'isolation insanity' or whatever you'd call it... )

(and lest anyone think this clashes with my life's goals - remember I said "make PEOPLE happy". I've just spent a fair few electrons examining the distinction between people and 'IN-corporations' )

Oh, and Cúchulainn? I'll go ya one better: We have our share of 'christmas stores' here, but one actually started like that for a couple of years, and did well enough to *expand* into a year-round craft shop!

Footnotes:
1. Just take a look at the etymology of 'corporation' if you want a laugh at irony - try comparing the def'n of "incorporeal" with a contemporary INcorporation, and tell I'm wrong... Show me were Microsoft or Price Waterhouse-Cooper actually IS (and don't point at the corporate head offices; that is can be changed if the organization decides - that is no more the INcorporation than my apartment is me ) The relevant term here is 'legal fiction' which describes a necessary action for courts, etc. but as I've been intimating in this whole post - the *actual* terminology is rather amusingly absurd at face-value!

2. Or whatever the gradation of 'development' is; I never studied biology much...