‘Twas the night after Halloween and the Christmas music was blaring. Um, what the hell? Over the years, the Christmas season has started to sneak closer and closer to the sacred night of Halloween. If you’ve ever been to a shopping mall on Nov. 1st, you’ve noticed Santa lethargically sitting in his pompously-large chair, pretending to care about what 5-year-olds want for Christmas. This is not a day removed from the door-hopping, over-indulging and subsequent vomiting done by those very same kids on the Day of the Dead.
Why? The broadening of the Christmas season can be blamed on one thing: money. The earlier the shopping season starts, the richer those rich tycoons, lethargically sitting in their pompously-large chairs, get, which is why Christmas time has nearly begun to spill into October. And when Christmas trees start popping up in the middle of Kohl’s before we can even finish stuffing ourselves full of our pillow cases of candy, they mean nothing. Sadly, the most sacred holiday to Gentiles around the world has become bastardized.
But the true victim of these unsolicited advances by the Christmas season is Halloween itself. This festival of death and devil-worship barely has time to breathe before being snuffed out by the odor of evergreens and candy canes. And, worse yet, due to the power of the almighty dollar, this slippery slope is inescapable. So there can be only one solution: combine the two holidays.
Both holidays share so much common ground that it’s a wonder this resolution hasn’t happened already. Think about it – both Christmas and Halloween started way back when, both are founded on the basic tradition of giving and both become a pain in the ass after you have kids. Sure, one touts death, ghosts and horror while the other celebrates the birth of Christ, but that’s a detail we’re willing to overlook.
This combined festival would trump all other holidays not named Take-Your-Daughter-to-Work Day (or Boxing Day, for Canadians). Weeks leading to the holiday would become an orgy of unabashed shopping, eating and cow-tipping. You might ask, “What’s with the cow-tipping?” Well, the tipping of the cows will appease the Jolly St. Scarecrow, and more cows tipped will mean less coal in your stocking. Less coal in your stocking means less carbolic acid and carbon dioxide. It might also mean less milk for a few months, but you can always get your daily dose of calcium from Tropicana Orange Juice: Amazing, straight-from-the-orange taste (shameless plug!). Malls would assault our senses with newly-colored tapestries of red, green, black and orange – and magenta. Hallmark store products would wish us a “Merry Boo!” or perhaps “A Wonderful Season of Peace, Love and Blood.”
Houses would be adorned not with traditional Christmas lights, but with Jolly St. Scarecrows – their toboggan pulled by the four bears: Smokey, McGriff, Lassie and Stumper. St. Scarecrow would be a large man in a red cape, with a pitchfork and a long, bushy white beard. Tell us that isn’t adorable.
And the eve of the unholy amalgam would involve a strange combination of milk and cookies and toilet paper, with many poems and songs dedicated to keeping St. Scarecrow from devouring all the food in their house – because the Jolly One is hungry 364 days a year, except for that one Wednesday in December.
The day itself will be infused with much drinking and rowdiness because no holiday is complete without drunken idiots streaking down Main Street. The preferred drink of choice would be eggnog mixed with Jim Beam: The Stuff Inside Matters Most (Shameless Plug No. 2!).
And no holiday is complete without a cookout. Just because the celebration will take place on the second Wednesday of December doesn’t mean that we can’t have a friendly family cookout outdoors.
Also, if you’re wondering about the choice of Wednesday, then consider this: people will be able to get two days off from work, and maybe even three if you play your cards right – no boss in his right mind would want anyone to work on the Friday following the big celebration, because no one likes drunken co-workers.
Will the people who celebrate Hanukkah and Kwanzaa feel left out? Probably. Quite frankly, it’s their fault for choosing non-commercialized religions. But maybe we can even incorporate some Hanukkah into our day of festivities. One day of rambunctious fun and entertainment followed by eight days of guilt and regret and then maybe a community confession to top it all off.
So when you’re out shopping this weekend for a present for your aunt from your mother’s stepsister’s side three times removed after finishing up taking down all the toilet paper from the trees on your front lawn, just imagine what life would be like if all that could be combined into one.
Maystrovsky is a member of the class of 2009.
