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Thread: Ooops! Christmas is coming!

  1. #1
    TobeFrank Paulclem's Avatar
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    Ooops! Christmas is coming!

    I was wandering around town, minding my own business on Saturday, when I began to notice the glitter of arcade and shop Christmas decorations. I met my wife and daughter, and we had lunch. My wife then declared that she had bought most of the prezzies online for this year.

    Thinking about it, considering that I work full time and also help in the allotment shop at weekends, I realised I'd probably only got 6 shopping days left before Christmas.

    I decided I'd be getting my stuff online too.

    Are you sorted?

  2. #2
    Casual Olympian Buckthorn's Avatar
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    I usually have everything bought by December 1st, last year I bought everything online. So far I have bought nothing this year, I intend to do it all online at two am sometime at the end of November/beginning of December.

  3. #3
    Card-carrying Medievalist Lokasenna's Avatar
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    My local Tesco has been stocking Christmas rubbish for several months now. I don't know why they don't just drape tinsel over the Easter eggs and have done with it...

    Seriously, some of the Christmas food they've been stocking goes past its use-by-date months before Christmas! What's the point of having, say, a Christmas-themed stilton that's uneatable by mid-November? The only thing different about it, as far as I can see, is that it costs slightly more than a non-Christmas themed lump of cheese...

    I have done no Christmas shopping yet, and what little shopping I will do will be done in December. I find the whole orgy of consumerism deeply distasteful, and the fact that it gets earlier every year worrying. If I put up any decorations this year (and that's a big 'if'), I shall do so on Christmas Eve, and they'll come down on Twelfth Night.

    Bah, humbug.
    "I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche

  4. #4
    Registered User kiki1982's Avatar
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    tinsel over the Easter eggs!! haha, that's a good one. I'm starting to wonder why they don't just leave all-year deco on. It would save a lot of time.

    But seriously, you've got a point.

    When we came to Germany in 2008, everything was pretty disciplined: Christmas deco and goodies came around the start of Advent (together with the Christmas markets) and stayed until about Twelfth Night. I noticed the next year that supermarkets gear up for Christmas subliminally by displaying all the Merci and Ferrero chocolates, because that's what people give to their neighbours or acquaintances and such people (they deserve recognition, but do not need a full-blown present). I think they might be hanging up the deco in the streets about now, but they'll only switch it on around the start of Advent.
    However, this year was really the first year that the 'back to school' things were in the local supermarket TOGETHER with the chocolate-coated lebkuchen. Back to school, for those who don't know, is halfway August, which makes it even worse. I don't think the biscuits go off any time soon, but it's just the idea. We weren't out of our summer clothes yet and were sweating in the last of our Indian summer and there were Christmas biscuits with snow-decorated packaging glaring at us from the shelves...

    The Germans used to be so disciplined, but it's come here too, it seems.

    We have to go shopping earlier for prezzies this year. Last time we did it in the nick of time (24th...) and decorate the Christmas tree too. So much work that we couldn't even think about that.
    Shame.
    One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.

    "Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)

  5. #5
    Registered User Aylinn's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kiki1982 View Post
    We weren't out of our summer clothes yet and were sweating in the last of our Indian summer and there were Christmas biscuits with snow-decorated packaging glaring at us from the shelves...
    Wow, Christmas biscuits in the middle of August.

    Maybe next time they will start to sell them in the middle of June?

    Thankfully, I haven't spotted Christmas decoration in supermarkets in Poland. But this thread reminded me that close to my family home there was a shop where they didn't bother removing Christmas decoration for 6 years.

  6. #6
    Registered User hannah_arendt's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lokasenna View Post
    My local Tesco has been stocking Christmas rubbish for several months now. I don't know why they don't just drape tinsel over the Easter eggs and have done with it...

    Seriously, some of the Christmas food they've been stocking goes past its use-by-date months before Christmas! What's the point of having, say, a Christmas-themed stilton that's uneatable by mid-November? The only thing different about it, as far as I can see, is that it costs slightly more than a non-Christmas themed lump of cheese...

    I have done no Christmas shopping yet, and what little shopping I will do will be done in December. I find the whole orgy of consumerism deeply distasteful, and the fact that it gets earlier every year worrying. If I put up any decorations this year (and that's a big 'if'), I shall do so on Christmas Eve, and they'll come down on Twelfth Night.

    Bah, humbug.
    In fact, Christmas decorations don`t have anything in common with Xmas. It doesn`t bother me but I think that we have lost the meaning of this time.

  7. #7
    Card-carrying Medievalist Lokasenna's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by hannah_arendt View Post
    In fact, Christmas decorations don`t have anything in common with Xmas. It doesn`t bother me but I think that we have lost the meaning of this time.
    Well, that's true. How often do you actually see Christmas associated with the birth of Christ with any real sincerity? Instead we have Santa Claus, who is a vestigal echo of the god Odin - a heathen deity whose dignity has been stripped away by the various PR departments of major brands.
    "I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche

  8. #8
    somewhere else Helga's Avatar
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    Christmas decorations start very early on the ice, and I believe the post office already has gotten some santa letters, for some reason kids think he lives here. We have 13 Santa Clauses and they all have names their specie is Santa Clause.

    I have to admit I got used to early shopping when I had a job and buying everything in December was not good for my purse. I don't have that problem anymore... but I still have gotten most of my shopping done.

    In the upbringing of my kid I don't focus that much on Jesus and his part in the holiday, it's a family holiday in my mind. I think it says a lot about how I raise my son what happened in a novelty store once, he pointed to a figurine and said :Hey it's Obi Wan Kenobi! I looked at it and told him it was Jesus.
    I hope death is joyful, and I hope I'll never return -Frida Khalo

    If I seem insensitive to what you are going through, understand it's the way I am- Mr. Spock

    Personally, I think that the unique and supreme delight lies in the certainty of doing 'evil'–and men and women know from birth that all pleasure lies in evil. - Baudelaire

  9. #9
    Voice of Chaos & Anarchy
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    You mean that there are people who still haven't switched to celebrating Sol Invictus on the fourth day after the Winter Solstice?

  10. #10
    Pièce de Résistance Scheherazade's Avatar
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    I love Christmas but I don't like shopping during that time. Christmas songs are causing strong physical reactions such as nausea... I truly feel sorry for people who work as sale assistants, having to listen to those "jolly" tunes all day long for weeks.
    ~
    "It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
    ~


  11. #11
    Bibliophile JBI's Avatar
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    The only thing I hate more than Christmas is Chinese New Year - all the chaos, the overblown commercial season, the awful traffic, the closing of whole cities, the inconvenience, the annoyance, the shops loaded with ugly crap, the switching of television and radio programs for awful holiday nonsense, the whole vibe just bothers me. I avoid one this year, but Chinese new year is going to plague me at the end of January. At least most Jews don't practice that hideous gift giving thing where you spend too much to buy people gifts they don't like, then you fight a war to return them to buy more stuff you don't need.

    A tip for all you serious shoppers - go on December 23rd or 24th before the shops close down, put what you want to buy on hold, wait for boxing day, and pick up your marked down goods without needing to go through the hassle of fighting for the remnants of what the more insane shoppers don't want. No headache, no fighting, just cool, calm shopping. This holiday season, shop with your brain not with your passion!

  12. #12
    Ecurb Ecurb's Avatar
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    Bah, Humbug to all (most) of you, too!

    G.K.Chesterton

    There fared a mother driven forth
    Out of an inn to roam;
    In the place where she was homeless
    All men are at home.
    The crazy stable close at hand,
    With shaking timber and shifting sand,
    Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
    Than the square stones of Rome.

    For men are homesick in their homes,
    And strangers under the sun,
    And they lay their heads in a foreign land
    Whenever the day is done.

    A child in a foul stable,
    Where the beasts feed and foam;
    Only where He was homeless
    Are you and I at home;
    We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
    But our hearts we lost---how long ago!
    In a place no chart nor ship can show
    Under the sky's dome.

    This world is wild as an old wife's tale,
    And strange the plain things are,
    The earth is enough and the air is enough
    For our wonder and our war;
    But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
    And our peace is put in impossible things
    Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
    Round an incredible star.

    To an open house in the evening
    Home shall all men come,
    To an older place than Eden
    And a taller town than Rome.
    To the end of the way of the wandering star,
    To the things that cannot be and that are,
    To the place where God was homeless
    And all men are at home.

  13. #13
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    Last edited by liza; 01-05-2014 at 07:18 PM.

  14. #14
    Bibliophile JBI's Avatar
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    The above poster posted what? It's being filtered out here because of the censorship.

  15. #15
    Clinging to Douvres rocks Gilliatt Gurgle's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JBI View Post
    The above poster posted what? It's being filtered out here because of the censorship.
    It's a video of some broad named Mariah Carey singing "All I Want for Christmas is You"

    Over here we have a tradition that started, God knows when maybe 15, 20 years ago, known as "Black Friday" shopping assault.
    The Friday after Thanksgiving has evolved into the kick off day for Christmas shopping.
    However, this year, the competition is trying to get the upper hand by opening their doors of Thanksgiving day.

    Anyhow, here's a video compilation I found of Black Friday stampedes...


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dIBL4tYQPI
    Last edited by Gilliatt Gurgle; 11-13-2013 at 10:50 PM.
    "Mongo only pawn in game of life" - Mongo

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKRma7PDW10

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