Silver and gold

Yesterday, IME wrote about America's little problem with premature Christmasification. Seems as though every year we bring out the holly and ivy a few weeks earlier, and now we're spreading holiday cheer all over Halloween. In the past, I've bounced back and forth between loving this trend and loathing it. This year, however, I've decided to transcend judgment and to attempt to delve deep into the American psyche to figure out why such a thing is happening. I think the root of all this prefestivity festiveness is the fact that somewhere in the embarrassing core of all of us we're just plain tacky. Though we would never admit it to an actual human being, we all have a secret weakness for sequins or tinsel or little flashing lights or crazy sweaters with cartoon characters on them or poorly-constructed, plastic replicas of foliage or crude, illuminated sculptures of sacred figures. But deep down, we're all embarrassed by this weakness because we know that such things are tacky and unacceptable. So we restrict ourselves to the holiday season. If we were to display such colorful, sparkly things throughout the entire year, we know we would receive the scorn of friends, neighbors, and delivery people. And since most people are neither eight years old nor stoned, "But it's so shiny!" is not a valid justification. But if we wait until holidays to display our worst, we can just say, "It's for Christmas. Don't you like Christmas? Bill O'Reilly said there was a war against Christmas. What side are you on?" And if that doesn't work, we can always defend the objectionable decorations by saying they belonged to our grandparents. We're not tacky. We're sentimental. Except now that we've had a taste of what it's like to be tacky, we want more of it. So we're gradually extending the Christmas season.

See what you made me do? Tell me to post every day and look what you get. You all should be ashamed of yourselves.

I'm grateful for monkey butt (20).