Poppies and Tinsel II

(~3 minutes to read)

Now that the Poppies Are Gone…

It’s November the twelfth, and yesterday I was laying a wreath on behalf of the First Okotoks Scout Group. Several hundred people attended this outdoor ceremony at the cenotaph, where the bright sunshine was making the hoar frost sparkle on the trees.

It’s a setting that I much prefer to the indoor ceremony, for reasons that it’s probably inappropriate to share here.

The weather and temperature to me are immaterial on Remembrance Day. We should be able to put up with whatever mother nature wants to throw at us for an hour or so. After all, we’re remembering millions of people who endured everything mother nature could throw at them, as well as everything their opponents (I find the word “enemy” inappropriate here…) could throw at them, for weeks and months on end.

A depressing percentage of them didn’t survive the ordeal; by contrast, it’s a fair bet that 99.999% of those at Remembrance Day services yesterday got home safely.

…The Tinsel and the Mistletoe Emerge

But now we’ve remembered, and the poppies are being blown by the wind off the steps of cenotaphs across the country, there’s nothing to hold back the onslaught of Christmas.

I’ve already seen “holiday” lights adorning the front of a house.

A family member received their first Christmas card a day or two ago. She asked if that meant it was okay to start humming carols around the house—I replied that it was okay just as long as it’s okay for me to eat my Easter eggs on Boxing Day (assuming I can remember where I hid them.)

And last week, I saw Christmas paraphernalia on the shelves in a hardware store. Today it was everywhere.

While this all seems premature to me (I’m the kind of guy who would prefer to leave it until Christmas Eve to decorate a Christmas tree), I have to admit that it’s a vast improvement on the previous decade or three. As noted in at least one previous article, I recall being bombarded with Christmas music as I walked down the tinsel-arched aisles of a hardware store in England in late September. Seeing Christmas stuff for sale in October was common.

I believe that the reason for this change is that a couple of years ago, someone made a song and dance about it being disrespectful to The Fallen to flog Christmas before Remembrance Day.

Thank you, Someone!

Is there any chance we can do a similar thing with Back to School supplies being available just as school breaks for summer? I mean, what kind of parent takes their kid out to buy school supplies on Canada Day?!?

And while we’re at it, can we do something about Halloween (in August as the school supplies dwindle on the shelves), Valentine’s Day in January, and Easter on February 15th?

I really have no objection to celebrating these and many other occasions (although like many, I question the cohabitation of a consumer feeding frenzy with a religious occasion such as Easter or Christmas), but I do object to the premature placement of the merchandise. I also object to the commercial hi-jacking of days that are designated as occasions to give thanks to specific groups of deserving people, such as mothers, fathers, grandparents and so on.

According to Wikipedia, businesses in the UK are trying to merge Grandmothers’ Day with Mothers’ Day and Grandfathers’ Day with Fathers’ Day in an effort to boost sales. So much for the spirit of the occasion. I’m sure their argument goes along the lines of “But Grandmothers are mothers too…” to which I would reply, “So recognize their awesomeness as mothers on Mothers’ Day and as grandmothers on Grandmothers’ Day. Oh—and you don’t need to give them a card to make them feel special.”

Remembrance Day seems to be the one occasion that the card companies seem to have left alone. I shudder when I imagine “Happy Remembrance Day!” plastered across a designer poppy on the front of a card, or hundreds of similar cards in the racks at your favourite card shop with advertising such as “Cheer up Your Neighbourhood Veteran with a November Eleventh Wish!” or “Celebrate Armistice Day with Your Friends, a Bunch of Poppies and a Card!”

Okay—I’d make an appalling advertisement copy writer. But you get my point.

And if that spectre isn’t tasteless enough for you, how long do you think it will be before a company starts selling 9/11 cards? I have far too little faith in humanity to believe that it’ll never happen.

But maybe—just maybe—humanity will surprise me. I hope so.