Happy ThanksMas: Paisanos, Posadas and Party People
by DeLaredo
Another holiday season is here upon us, and with it have arrived the long lines at the international bridges and the jam-packed crowds at the mall that makes shopping unbearable. Also, it's the season of endless posadas and a flooding of champurrado that brings smiles to even the most hardened Scrooges. Still, as much as I love this season of joy and giving, it seems that every year the Christmas season is extended and exploited further and combined into a two month extravaganza.
All around my subdivision, some of my eager neighbors have already put up their Christmas decorations right after Halloween. Turkey Day has not even passed and they are already looking forward to Santa. To them, it seems as if Thanksgiving and Christmas have been combined and intertwined into one mega-sized holiday that I call "Thanksmas". Even retail stores, in their greed and savvy business tactics begin to push all their Christmas items in mid-November. But what is all the hurry? Why don't we take it one holiday at a time? That way we can savor each holiday for what it is. They are not interchangeable and both have wonderful elements within themselves.
Still, things such as "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" seem to turn the season into nothing more than an empty and soulless materialistic grab-bag in which we, as consumers, seem to be bamboozled by the big media, into robotically attacking the malls in hordes like the zombies in Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Surely there is more to the holidays than buying senseless gadgets and spending hours of dead time in a mall and running around like ants in a rainstorm. But, don't get me wrong, I understand fully the need of buying and selling for our economy to remain robust and healthy, still, it seems that in the process we have to sell our souls to corporate giants that turn the importance of Christmas (xmas?) into sales, receipts, gift cards and mark-down prices.
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