Why Combining Holidays Is Good For Your Wallet

By Wixx, special contributor

Recently, as I am sure you have noticed, retailers have begun to move Christmas to an earlier timeslot. No longer is it the White Christmas in the middle of the winter. This year Christmas moved into a tie with Halloween for space in retail stores and card shops in October. It displaced Thanksgiving in November.

As the Christmas juggernaut rolls on, it consumes and assimilates all Holidays in its path. Soon Santa Claus will get credit for Thanksgiving and that tradition will die off on its own. Jolly ole St. Nick will come down your chimney with a sack of presents and a turkey. The presents will be left under the tree and the turkey dinner will be left on the dining room table.

This will mean two things for parents. First, they will have to sneak the presents under the tree while preparing Christmas dinner, and giving the credit for the wonderful meal formally known as Thanksgiving to the fictitious reverse burglar as well. Second, they will only have to have one major Holiday meal. No more turkeys and hams and double doses of mashed potatoes and candied yams. Just one Turkey dinner that will satisfy all.

But that is not all. No, that is only the beginning. The retail world wants to roll out the red carpet on Halloween now too. Or, should I say the red suit? I do not understand fully why this is as the greeting card companies will miss out on selling all of those extra cards, which my Mother sends out every year, by combining the Holidays. And retailers will lose the revenue for the decorations. First let us examine the cards. Gone will be Halloween cards with ghosts and skeletons, as well as Thanksgiving cards with pilgrims, turkeys, and cornucopias.

Instead there will be one card, the Fall/Winter Holiday card, featuring Santa Claus, either dressed as a ghost or surrounded by bats, black cats, etc. He will have one foot on a mound of snow and the other in a pile of autumn leaves. Over his left shoulder, the familiar sack of presents will be draped. In his right hand will be a magical, miniature buffet table, which will grow to full size once he places it in your dining room. Some cards will have Pilgrims and Indians in the background. In the future, the pilgrims will fade from the images and the legend will be changed so that the Native Americans started Thanksgiving to thank Santa for allowing Mrs. Claus to teach them how to grow corn and live off the land. Thus we save money only buying one card to cover all fall and winter Holidays.

You notice already that a lot of Christmas cards have had the ‘and a Happy New Year’ line in them for years. This was actually the official beginning of the takeover. Once Mr. Claus was given New Year’s, he got greedy. If Santa were to carry an American flag, we could roll Veteran’s Day into the mix as well. In fact the sack of presents could simply have the red and white stripes and the stars sewn on it, and it would be all good. The only other change to the Claus man’s outfit would be to make his collar blue in honor of Labor Day of course. The background of the cards will have fireworks added and then the Holiday that would consume the second half of the year would become the Christmas Season.

Decorations for the Christmas season could then be put up at the end of June and left up until late January. The center piece would of course be the Christmas Season Star which would be a five pointed star made from the intersecting of a flag, a fireworks rocket, a witch’s broom, a turkey leg, and a candy cane. The official colors of the season would be black, orange, brown, green, red, white, and blue.

Think of all the money that would be saved, not only by only having to purchase one set of all inclusive decorations, but in maintenance of said décor. Every time you take down a set of light be they Christmas icicle lights, tree lights, purple Halloween lights, or lights with little ghosts on them, you run the risk of breaking a bulb, pinching a wire, of shorting out a whole set. You would also save money by not having to have a closet, attic, or garage full of large Tupperware or Rubbermaid bins to store each of the previously separate Holidays’ knickknacks. The frugality of the Holidays would be complete when you consider the inevitable creation of the Easter Season.

This of course would replace all of the early Holidays each year and would be symbolized by the Easter bunny. He would be carrying a basket of eggs in one hand, a box of chocolates in the other. Cupid would be flying above him holding his bow and an American flag. In his quiver, mixed in with his heart-tipped arrows, would be a rolled up picture of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The Easter bunny would be wearing a brightly colored shirt with the likenesses of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln seen clearly on the front. Both Cupid and the bunny would also have shamrock designs adorning their clothing.

After removing your Christmas season decorations, you could begin setting up your homes and cubicles for Easter season. The main item of course would be a collage of shapes including eggs, hearts, president’s faces, shamrocks, and stars. The official colors of Easter season would be red, pink, green, white, blue, and an assortment of pastels. Not only would each of us consumers save by only having to purchase two Holiday cards per year, but our employers would only have to give us 2 paid days off. Banker and Postal workers would most likely revolt, but the rest of us would get used to it pretty easily. Thanks for reading and Happy Christmas Season!! Err, Merry Christmas Season? Merry Christmas and a Happy New Season?

Image courtesy of summervillain

Jeffrey Strain

Jeffrey strain is a freelance author, his work has appeared at The Street.com and seekingalpha.com. In addition to having authored thousands of articles, Jeffrey is a former resident of Japan, former owner of Savingadvice.com and a professional digital nomad.