I’m writing this on November 16, a Friday afternoon. On Wednesday night, November 14, I went shopping for groceries at the sprawling and mightily stocked Joseph Howe Atlantic Super Store. Piped in for the gathered consumers, dwarfed by canyons of President’s Choice frozen dinners, McCain Frozen Pizzas and glass jars stuffed with litres of oyster-white Hellmann’s Mayonnaise (“Eat For Real,” Hellmann’s instructs), was the Christmas music of years past and present.
You know the songs well, I don’t need to list them for you. Even the new tracks were versions of older ones, a note-perfect rendition of Joni Mitchell’s gorgeous “River” by Sarah McLachlan, for instance, so similar to the original to render it practically redundant.
“It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees, they’re putting up reindeer and singing songs of joy and peace. Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on,” sings McLachlan, hitting each and every one of Mitchell’s notes.
Sarah, wandering through the shopping aisles of seasonal sentiment, in November, I’m feeling you.
In the ‘States it has a name, “Black Monday.” It’s the day after American Thanksgiving, traditionally the last weekend of November. That’s the first day the Christmas rush really begins, the full onslaught of the seasonal commerce machine, represented in malls and shopping districts as treacley, hovering holiday tunes and endless advertising on TV.
Of course, Thanksgiving in Canada is in October, so we don’t get a Black Monday. Unless it’s November 1, the day after Halloween.
To get a sense of how things have changed over the years, how far into the fall the Christmas push has been extended, this is what Sean Passmore told me in an email about working at Sam the Record Man, which he did for 12 years, both here and in Toronto:
“Most folks really don’t like hearing Christmas music before December comes ’round. In fact, it has been my experience working in the record store over the years that folks often complain about hearing the tunes December 1st, which was traditionally the day the Xmas music ‘ban’ was lifted from the store.”
Right, December 1. That seems reasonable. How did that change? How is it we put up with this frantic, frenetic assault of sound and image in the first few weeks on November?
Is it any wonder that by the time Christmas does finally get here, we’re all fucking sick of it?
A colleague here at The Coast reported that he saw ads in late October for Canadian furniture king Leon’s “Ho Ho Hold the Payment” annual holiday sales event, one of the more obnoxious regular campaigns despite their occasionally witty TV commercials. That remains conjecture and couldn’t be independently verified, but if it is true, we may be on the verge of the October Christmas campaigns in years ahead. Would you be more liable to buy your Christmas gifts from retailers who advertised in October? Or less? Or would the maudlin, false sentiment more than 55 days before the Fat Man flies finally provoke you to blacklist those companies, hitting them right in their greedy, corporate guts?
On TV, these are the businesses whose early November ads I’ve noticed have had a definitive Christmas theme, in the images of shiny, shiny balls, dead pines, fireplaces, and gifts wrapped with ribbons. And, of course, the music:
Canadian Tire. Wal-Mart. Chrysler. Sears. Swiss Chalet, with their inevitable “Festive Special”. That’s right, take the family out to eat to celebrate the holidays. In November.
With this information, do what you will.
This article appears in Nov 15-21, 2007.
