Orleans Weekly Journal
Published: Friday, November 16, 2007 Holiday headache starts too soon Orléans, wake up! There are less than 40 shopping days until Christmas. Just over 500 retail hours remain to buy those ties, toys, books, gift cards and stocking stuffers. And merchants will remind us of this ticking clock from now until Rudolph leads his reindeer buddies and Santa across the Christmas Eve sky. So why obsess about Christmas already? Hey, I’m just going with the flow of crass commercialism that has supplanted the original idea of celebrating the birth of Christ, peace on earth, reflecting and regrouping with family, etc. But don’t take my word for it, just open the newspaper, turn on your TV or take a quick jaunt along St. Joseph or over to the mall. Print ads with Santa toques are out, the commercials with jingle themes are playing and the decorations are up in spades. While you were shelling out those last handfuls of chocolates and potato chips to trick-or-treaters at 8:30 p.m. on Halloween, retail elves everywhere were racing to suspend “holiday” posters from the rafters, erect those gaud-awful plastic trees and string all sorts of Christmas lights in and around your favourite store. Even my own Shopper’s Drug Mart had their tree was up in record time and Christmas card shelves were fully stocked. Over at the Superstore on Innes you can’t miss the Christmas section: it seems to run the shelves for about 10 checkout lengths with a variety of Candy canes and holiday-themed bonbons on offer. Not to be outdone, Place d’Orléans dropped us a nice postcard in the mail the other day to remind us that Santa’s on his way and is bringing his alter ego Père Noel with him . . . on Nov. freakin’ 17th. To be fair to the fat man in the red suit, he does have many malls to visit and kids to see, so we’ll cut him a bit of slack. But when do we say enough? And if not, what’s next? Christmas decorations on display before you buy your poppy during the last week of October? On this issue, we could learn from our American friends who do their best to keep the Christmas season to delay the start of this annual retail orgy until just after their Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November. As an aside, given the value of our loonie versus the U.S. greenback, more than a few readers of this column will likely trek south of the 49th parallel to show Canadian stores, large and small, that the consumer is indeed king and doesn’t buy – pardon the pun – all their price disparity excuses. But this crass commercial cloud does have a silver lining. The early Christmas blitz reminded me to remove the Halloween display from our front porch. And I’ve penciled Jan. 2nd into my agenda to look for Valentine’s Day cards. While I’m there the card store may even have a small section with early specials on St. Patrick’s Day mints and Easter chocolates. Do you think I’m right? Send a comment to orleansouttakes@transcontinental.ca. = = = = = Walter Robinson is the former chief of staff to Ottawa’s mayor and a proud Orléans resident. |