Happy Thanksgiving, 'Murica. Or as it is called in Australia, and in most of the parts of the world in Not America, Thursday.
Even though I live in Australia and Thanksgiving is not at all a thing here, that has not stopped various shops claiming to have "Black Friday" sales. This is nonsensical on three fronts.
Firstly, there is no Thanksgiving here and therefore no Friday immediately following it. We certainly are not taking a day of leave off, in order to go shopping. Many Americans, after having the Thursday public holiday off, will also take Friday off as well and turn this into a four-day long weekend. This is sensible if Thursday is a public holiday.
Secondly, the tax year in Australia runs from July 1 through to June 30; so the idea that this is the last chance for businesses and firms to go into the black for the year (hence why this is called "black" Friday), is patently ridiculous. There are still seven months in the financial year and the pre and post Christmas sales yet to come.
Thirdly, this is Australia. Black Friday sounds like one of many events in history where we might have had bushfires so bad that catastrophic loss of life has happened. In Australia, this is not a commemoration of Black Friday. Black Friday sounds like it is a day of misery, when peoples' houses, property, and many lives, have been blackened and destroyed by fire.
If I may borrow something else from 'Murica... that's one strike, two strikes; you're outta here, Black Friday.
Yes, I live in Australia and as such I live in the remnants of an Empire which reached its peak in 1914, and the slowly collapsed like a flan in a cupboard. Therefore as someone who lives in an area of the world where neither Halloween or Thanksgiving is a cultural thing, or even remotely relevant to the history or geography of the nation, this is going to sound a bit weird.
We need a beginning of summer festival.
We need a Novemberween holiday.
Woolworths and Coles would like to make Halloween a thing so that they can sell chocolate and sweets for children to harass their neighbours to get, and whilst it might be fun for some kiddies to dress up, most don't and it just looks really silly when Civil Sunset is 07:42pm and Astronomical Twilight isn't until 09:20pm. Ghoulies, Ghosties, Valkyries, Skellingtons, and Wolfmans simply do not walk around in daylight. Draculas can not walk around in daylight because they will turn into dust. (Beware though. Draculas can have any job.)
Neither does Thanksgiving actually make any cultural sense in Australia, because while being thankful for what you have is a good practice, our history of genocide of first nations people isn't whitewashed with myth-making of Pilgrim Fathers. The autumnal traditions of Pumpkin Pie and by extension Pumpkin Spice Latte (which is actually just the spice in Pumpkin Pie and not actually a pumpkin spice), also do not make cultural sense here.
Nevertherless, I think that we need beginning of summer festival and a Novemberween holiday, not because I think that we need those things because I want Australia to culturally shift closer to 'Murica but rather, that without those things, Christmas has invaded and absorbed all of the space left behind. Christmas is a gas. Left unchecked, Christmas expands to fill all of the space in the calendar container and it occupies far more space than the merely the date which it falls on.
This year, I was Whammed on November 7th. This is ridiculous. Whamaggedon should not begin until the 1st of December. Whamaggedon is a game of strategy and skill in which the player tries to go as long as possible without without hearing "Last Christmas" by Wham! If the player hears the song between those days, they are out of the game. All I can think of is that Woolworths and Coles and Aldi et al. are a pack of dastardly knaves without remorse, and try to Whambush players against their will.
A similar problem happens when one of forced to hear the almost psychotic 'wob wob wob wob' of "Wonderful Christmastime" by Paul McCartney. The ex-Beatle, having decided to include 122 "Nah"s in the ending of "Hey Jude", simply couldn't leave well enough alone and made use of the fact that as Christmas is an annual event, he could use it inflict pain and suffering to millions every single year.
A third member of the triumvirate of the Christmas house of audio pain, which begins with a series of chimes played on a celesta, is of course "All I Want for Christmas Is You" by Mariah Carey and Walter Afanasieff. Now there is a lot to be said about this song, which is a masterclass in song writing as the chorus runs from Cmaj, C7, Fmaj to the deliciously spicy and christmassy D minor 7 flat 5 chord (Dm7b5); so I can't fault it from a technical perspective but I am convinced that if you play that song backwards you will hear the Devil and even worse, if you play that song forwards you will hear the Mariah Carey.
Then there is the problem that Christmas things go on sale seven weeks before the date itself. That might very well be fine for things like mince pies which have an expiry date of 13th January 3024, or bottles of wine which can be laid down for years before they are woken up, but for chocolate that's simply too far away. Chocolate does have an expiry date, when the cocoa butter in the chocolate separates and rises to the surface due to temperature fluctuations, or 'sugar bloom' where the sugar in the chocolate absorbs moisture and then crystallises on the surface. Then as the chocolate which is a solid mixture loses all of its structural integrity, it crumbles and blows away as though it were an Egyptian pharaoh.
As it currently stands, the run home to Christmas in the calendar, pretty well much begins on the Monday immediately after the Bathurst 1000. The end of September has the Festivals of the Boot with the Australian Rules and Rugby League football Grand Finals and apart from that weekend of Bathurst, there is nothing of import whatsoever. Indeed the last public holiday before Christmas is Labor Day which is on that first Monday in October.
Some say that "the race that stops the nation" The Melbourne Cup, which is on the first Tuesday in November might be a thing to break up that last quarter but as more people work from home, as less people work in big offices, and as the banks and insurance companies lay off people left, right and centre but still make super-super-profits, the ability for people to care even a jot about a horse race which they don't care about, is way way less. The Melbourne Cup for lost of people, only really mattered because it involved mid-week sandwiches and booze at work. With fewer and fewer people working in big offices, that kind of one-day community has been dissolved. There are no more free sandwiches. There is no more free booze. The Melbourne Cup no longer stops the nation. Most people, have no idea it is on. I do not know who won it this year. I do not care.
That space in the calendar with Halloween being a joke and Thanksgiving not being a thing, has meant that Christmas reaches further and further back into the year. This is rather a bit ironic given that as more people from different faith traditions call Australia their home, even the cultural hold that Christmas has, is fading. Those lights that you see over people's houses, are now equally likely to have gone up in mid-October as preparation for Diwali than for Christmas.
Simply flipping what exists in the Northern Hemisphere, to a point in the year exactly six months later, doesn't make a whole lot of sense either. The end of April and beginning of May would equate to events like Easter and May Day but given that Easter is already Easter and May Day might already map to Labor Day in October, then this seems silly. There is no obvious end of May and beginning of June holiday that I can think of, which would fit for November 30.
If were Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then with my powers untold I would install some kind of spring festival on the last Friday in October because everyone loves a long weekend and another summer festival on the first Monday in December because everyone loves a long weekend. Call them Magpie Day and Waratah Day for all I care. Name one of them after Australia's favourite saint, St. Bin Chicken. Crikey wikey argumente, amen.
Because Christmas in its current three month form is a monster. Monster is a technical term for a plant which has either grown oversized or has developed oversized and possibly cultivated growths. Christmas and now Black Friday with no Thanksgiving, have become monstrous and hideously too long. Make it stop. I can only hear Mariah Carey, Wham and that 'wob wob wob wob' so many times.
wob wob wob wob
wob wob wob wob
wob wob wob wob
wob wob wob wob
<i wanna bang my head on a coffee table... make it stop>
No comments:
Post a Comment