Does celebrating holidays early matter?
Many theme parks will start their Halloween celebrations in August. Christmas will start in November and go on into early January. Shops start early for those celebrations as well. Does it matter? Some people think it does some think it doesn’t. Is it just a cash grab or Does it give a chance for everyone who wants to to celebrate?
Comments
We commemorated the 'Feast of St Peter and St Paul' last Sunday rather than on the Monday in our parish last week, a day early.
That was to allow people who were working on the Monday to celebrate it together with those who weren't. Obviously people who had to work on a Sunday weren't able to be there.
Are shops, pubs and restaurants, theme parks etc which celebrate particular events early or unseasonably doing so to enable more people to celebrate these things or are they doing it to make money?
Obviously they need to make money otherwise they'd go out of business but it depends on the motivation.
Shops aren't going to stop stocking meat or dairy products, say, during Lent, unless there was a commercial reason for them to do so or unless everyone collectively abstained from these things for religious reasons.
How about non-Christian festivals like Eid or Diwali?
I'm pretty wedded to the church calendar but that doesn't mean I expect Baptists or Pentecostals to observe it the way I try to.
It does bug me, I must admit, when Anglican churches sit lightly by their own lectionary and church calendar but again that's their business not mine.
I'm not sure what shops etc are celebrating from November onwards, but it isn't the Incarnation.
Insofar as we are talking about privately-run, secular organizations starting the Christmas season early, I think this is one of those topics for which they invented the phrase "And there's not a damn thing you can do about it."
At most, you might have recourse to a few "free-market solutions", eg. get a buncha friends together and call your local department-store and say none of you will be buying any Christmas related stuff until December 1st, so don't bother putting it out for sale until then. But good luck finding people who care enough to do that, even among those who like to tsk-tsk about how "Christmas is starting earlier and earlier every year."
She says "what if we don't live that long?"
I say -:all the more reason to celebrate early!
Christmas events (of various kinds) do seem to happen before 25th December rather than in the season of Christmas after the 25th.
My mum didn’t like it either, because I was tall and if she bought too early my trousers would be mid-calf by Christmas. OTOH, she had to buy something or I had nothing to wear.
Well, on that topic, I would say that things like putting out decorations and playing carols ARE, in fact, celebrating Christmas, though it might be more accurate to say, at least in the case of a store, that they are trying to create a celebratory atmosphere, in order to get people in the mood for buying the Christmas products that have been put out for sale.
Though I guess this might depend on what our definition of "celebrate" is. If the stores are simply putting the items out for sale, with no accompanying music or decorations, I'd agree that's just preparation, not celebration. OTOH if putting up decorations and playing carols in your home is considered celebration, then I think it's also celebration when stores do it.
In my experience, it's often a pretty blurry distinction between preparing for a holiday and celebrating the holiday. Erecting and decorating a Christmas tree, for example, is usually done in a festive spirit, even if the tree doesn't come into full use until the presents are unwrapped on Christmas Day. And listening to carols is absolutely festive, because there's no practical, preparatory reason to do so(*).
(*) Unless maybe you're listening to carols in order to choose a playlist for an upcoming Christmas celebration, but that's a pretty niche endeavour.
I believe the shops are celebrating Mammon, which in the UK may be done at any time of year except Easter Day and Christmas Day.
I would say that motive is necessary. If I start playing Christmas carols because I know you detest them and I want to use my turn to choose music to make you miserable, I'd say I'm not celebrating Christmas--regardless of the time of year--as much as trying to start a fight. Similarly if you play Christmas music because it tends to make people buy more things, I'd say that is not celebrating as much as trying to make money. At best you are trying to encourage celebration in others, but I think even that is a stretch since spending money is not in itself a Christmas-associated activity. I'd say that rather you are trying to remind people that they will want to have more items to use to celebrate Christmas
I have heard that this is a German thing and that you should never wish a German "happy birthday" before the day itself...
As for the motives of various people, including people who run businesses and shops and things, I think that depends on the people, depends on the people running it, depends on whoever makes these decisions up at the top, which could be a corporate decision, depends on the employees at the shop and so on and so on. I am sure that there are some people who are happy to for example that theme parks let more people people enjoy the stuff stuff than they might otherwise be able to if they were limited to the smaller window for various holidays and there are some people who are just happy about the money and there are some people who are feeling both. In an ideal world, for example, one would be able to go to Walt Disney World and experience. The Disney Halloween experience specifically somewhere between October 1 and November 2, but you know also in an ideal world, everyone could do it, everyone could do it for free, everyone could teleport there, even if they lived in the middle of the country too far away from either park, but we don’t live in that world yet. Someday we will live in an ideal world in the new creation, and who knows how such things might be, but until then, I say let people enjoy what they enjoy. I personally roll my eyes and make jokes about the way that for example I am quite sure that in about five minutes after July 4, the Halloween stuff will start showing up in grocery stores and Target and what have you because it’s the next big holiday for people to buy stuff for; I don’t know, I might actually start doing spooky stuff during the month period in between the two celebrations of Bon/Obon, the Japanese festival of the dead (very much like the approach of Dia de Los Muertos), which depending on the region, is held in either mid-July or mid-August.
The Christmas goods have to make way for the Easter ones.
If I remember my history correctly, during the depression Macy's kicked off Christmas shopping after our Thanksgiving as a way of try get people to start spending money again.
But it is not so unusual for many occasions to be extended. Just saw my first Amazon back to school advertisement. Their program will extend credit to families to pay for purchases on an installment plan.
Remember lay away plans? I know I got my first bike at Christmas because my family bought it in June and had six months to pay for it so it was not that much of a hit in the family budget
Actually, when I worked at Walmart the Christmas trees were put up just after 4 September. (our Labor Day).