Full Black Ahead

 A guest post by my dear friend Anonymous or Señor Anónimo -- AKA Pragmatic Man. AKA Linguist Man, AKA Traveling Man

I'm old enough to remember when Christmas was a holiday in December, Thanksgiving was a holiday in November, and Halloween was a holiday in October. Each had its evolving traditions, and each was, of course, fodder for the vast sales machine that drives the US and Chinese economies, but at least they were separate, and gave the end of the year some variety. The garish orange of Halloween, along with black, dominated decorations in October. This gave way to a muted, burnt orange in November, complemented by red and yellow leaves and browned turkeys. December was all red and green (and of course, tinsel). I suppose that in the digital age changes in color and decoration can proceed much faster, and yet there is a disturbing trend.

Being as I currently am, a traveler, I've had the misfortune to shop in malls from Minneapolis to Phoenix over the last few months, and as early as OCTOBER 3RD, there were Christmas decorations up and for sale, and Christmas sales promotions going on. I gather that, even with the invention of Halloween toys for kids, toy turkeys and the like, there's still nothing that sells like Chri$tma$, and so, like the universe, it's expanding.

Now I'm an investor, so I'm not opposed to a little extra profit (assuming that the corporate giants might share a tiny bit with me instead of voting themselves even bigger bonuses). The economy is a house of cards these days, and it needs all the help it can get. The problem is that Chri$tma$ isn't expanding into a vacuum. It's enveloping and digesting those other beloved holidays. A lot of people think that sales on Thanksgiving day are a shocking new development, but if you've seen any media at all in recent years, or checked the store shelves, you should know better. We've already allowed Thanksgiving to become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chri$tma$, Inc. and now its tentacles are surrounding Halloween in a menacing manner. Imagine Santa Claus wearing a Borg headset, saying "We will assimilate you" to trick-or-treaters everywhere.


If that image isn't scary enough for you, the marketing machine has branded the former beginning of Chri$tma$ as Black Friday. Now, to be fair, this was never intended to sound scary. To accountants, black isn't a bleak or scary color, it's the color of profits. Red is their scary color - of losses. Black Friday was the industry insider slang for the big shopping bash when stores moved "into the black" for the first time in the fiscal year. But out of context, especially in racist America, anything black, especially capitalized Black, is bad, scary, and dangerous. Better buy something big to hide behind when the blast comes!

So now imagine not just one black Black BLACK day, but a half-year of black calendar. If Chri$tma$ envelops Halloween the way it has Thanksgiving, there will be no bulwark to stop its advance until July 4th. Can red, green and tinsel trump the Red, White and Blue? Probably not. But if you don't want to see tinseled trees on July 5th in your lifetime, consider taking these simple steps:

(1) Don't buy anything on Thanksgiving or Black Friday this year. It
only encourages them.

(2) Next year, as soon as you see Chri$tma$ decorations in any store (if
it's before Thanksgiving, but c'mon, it will be), ask to see the
manager, and tell him/her "Shame on you. Christmas is a holiday in
December." Then walk out of the store. You can always shop somewhere
else that day.