An October Christmas Commercial

Earlier today I heard some music coming from the television in the other room. I thought, “Wait just a minute. No way! I can’t be hearing that correctly.”

So, I walked into the room and, sure enough, I saw my first Christmas commercial on TV for this year. I said, “Come on. You must be kidding me!”

I pulled out my phone and looked at the date. “Let’s see,” I thought, “it’s… October 23^rd, it’s still a week before Halloween. That may be the earliest I’ve seen an ad for Christmas on TV.”

The ad was for K-Mart and I just caught the end of it but I think it had to with their layaway program. So I will quickly grant that the whole concept of layaway involves putting some things aside well before Christmas in order to pay them off by the time Christmas arrives. However, it was still a surprise to hear the Christmas music playing in the background and taking in the references to the Christmas season.

I laughed and thought, “Well, that’s how it is nowadays. They start advertising Christmas and making references to Christmas earlier and earlier every year.” Then I went back in the other room and continued putting up the Christmas tree.

Going To See Santa

I can still remember going to a little outdoor strip mall as a kid to see Santa. 

As I sat on Santa’s lap informing him of the many wonderful toys I wanted for Christmas he turned his head to look at my brother who was standing by his other side and I saw a string going around the back of his head that was attached to his beard.

“What?!?”

I was young but my keen, analytical mind was still able to rapidly interpret this data and come to the realization that the big white beard on this man was fake.  And, of course, that realization quickly led to the unavoidable conclusion that this man was not really Santa!

It was a shocking moment.

And that’s how I came to realize a hard truth.  It is a truth that we all have to acknowledge at some point in life.  The truth that sometimes Santa has to send out other representatives because he can’t be at all the various malls during the busy Christmas season.