It’s July 1st and you’re walking through your favorite local big-box retail store (or the one you tolerate to save all that money every year) and suddenly, despite it being sweltering outside, you find yourself in the middle of an aisle fully stocked with brand new Christmas decorations. You shake your head and snicker as you say under your breath, “Already?!”
You’re not going crazy, my friends. What was once a holiday shopping frenzy that took up the last month of the year has progressed into a full-blown half-year sales and strategy extravaganza for both retailers and consumers. Who is to blame, you ask? Surprisingly, if you do a little digging, you’ll find this is not a one-sided push from retailers, but in fact, the market reacting to the demands of shoppers.
Trust me when I tell you that retail marketers don’t want to be in holiday shopping season planning meetings in April, but they also recognize that if they wait until September to start thinking about the holiday season, they will have some serious catching up to do!
In fact, a recent CreditCards.com report shows that not only have more than 30 million Americans already started their holiday shopping by September, a full 50 million say they will start earlier this year than last year. Over 6 million Americans claim they are DONE with their holiday shopping by the end of September and nearly 64 million expect to be complete by the end of November.
From the Fiscal Times:
“We love to complain about stores putting up holiday displays earlier and earlier each year, but the truth is that millions of Americans start holiday shopping long before the first Christmas tree appears in a store,” CreditCards.com industry analyst Matt Schultz said in a statement.
So, gone are the days of black-and-white movies where the family piled into the station wagon and went out on December 24th to buy the tree and all the presents as soon as dad got home from work with his bonus. In today’s consumer-driven, always-open, online retail world, you can expect to see the vibrant colors of a fully stocked aisle of decorations on the first day of Q3. Enjoy your 177-day Christmas shopping season, America!
Despite the fact that in the 60 years that NORAD has been tracking Santa Claus on Christmas Eve each year Santa has received a fighter jet escort through Canada and the U.S., the animations this year actually show the fighter jets, and the peace-mongers are all up in arms about how seeing the fighter jets are going to traumatize America’s children. Oh, the children….Won’t somebody please think of the children!
First off, when you wake up tomorrow morning in the safety of your secured home on land that is privately owned by you or the person you are renting from, and you use your running water and on-demand electricity, then put on your nice or comfy clothes and your warm jacket either before or after you get into your automobile that you own or the bank has leant you the money to own, and either drop the kids off at school or go straight to your job, just remember one thing….None of that would exist without the United States Military.
So if NORAD wants to give Santa Claus a fighter jet escort in its animations, then NORAD should get to give Santa Claus a fighter jet escort in its animations. NORAD is not crazy for using its military might to protect Santa Claus. These peace-mongers are crazy for not recognizing that their right to whine about Santa Claus having a fighter jet escort has been secured for them by well over two hundred years of the United States Military.
Peace-mongers, be thankful that you have a military that lives in the shadows of your life; one that stays on its bases and airfields and is not roaming through the streets picking people up and bringing them in for questioning. Be thankful that you have a military that fights overseas and never here at home among us, or with us. Be thankful that we have the damned fighter jets to protect Santa Claus (and you) in the first place!
Trust me, America, your kids know guns exists. They know we have a military. They know there are fighter jets, and the role they play in this world. They also know there are threats out there in the world to their safety. It is not a foreign concept to them. They do what you tell them because they are afraid of you – either what you will do to them, or what you will take away from them. There are challenges in their young lives of which they are afraid, and there are bullies at their school that strike fear into their little hearts. They might not tell you about it, but trust me, there are things of which they are afraid, so a fighter jet escort for Santa as a security measure is very practical and non-life-altering concept for your little ones to understand and process, despite what you might think or choose to believe, peace-mongers.
If you have not yet leveled with your children about Santa Claus, and they think he’s real and visits the house of every good child in the world in a single night, then do you not think it is a very practical measure with all the threats to our safety out there in the world, that the United States Air Force protect Santa Claus as he flew over the United States? I bet your kids would think it is a good idea.
If any one even sneezes the wrong way on a commercial plane these days, we call in a fighter jet escort. If Santa Claus were real, would he not be a fantastic target for a terrorist organization? Think of the damage to the economy and the mental strife shooting Santa out of the sky would have on all of us if he were real.
So, if your kids think Santa is real and they are going to hear about Santa being tracked by NORAD this year, take comfort in knowing your kids are going to know Santa is completely safe with the highly-sensitive, bomb-detecting, gift-scanning x-ray machine all the presents go through before they get put on the sleigh, the top-notch security screening and background checks all of the elves and supporting personnel have gone through before being allowed to pass through the metal detectors and body scan machines at the entrance to the North Pole Compound, and two of the most deadly and accurate aerial weapons ever created by man escorting him through the sky.
I, for one, am just glad we have the ability to track Santa Claus and his fighter jet escort throughout his journey right on a website. Maybe once they are done tracking Santa for the year, the people who are running www.noradsanta.org could go to Washington to help President What’s-His-Name with that Don't-Name-It-After-Me-Anymore-Care website.
