Holiday shopping taken to extremes

What is it with all the shopping ads these days? Why did Christmas products begin to appear on shelves in October, weeks before Halloween? Black Friday is now black Thursday on Thanksgiving. What the heck is going on?

I really don’t know where to start. I do know it makes me ill when I see merchants whip adults into a frenzied mob, beating up each other just to get the latest “hot” item or, worse yet, a “hot” child’s toy the stores say we can’t do without.

These stores advertise and encourage people to camp out for hours awaiting the store doors opening at ungodly hours. They encourage a mob mentality of what I call “combat shopping.” These same stores have moved up their Black Friday sales to open up on Thanksgiving Thursday — all in the name of the all mighty buck.

The ads on TV and radio are even worse. With obnoxious characters beating a verbal and visual hammer into the foreheads of an unsuspecting public, their message. The message is to buy this and that at — supposedly — low prices. It’s an open message that greed is good.

I won’t name the stores. I believe everyone knows the ones I am talking about. Most are national chains with multi-million dollar advertising budgets. They flood the airways and newspapers with advertising, pushing this kind of behavior. The weekend newspaper weighed a ton, stuffed to gills with sales ads — so much I nearly needed a crow bar to pry it out of my newspaper box.

Yes, I know this is the holiday shopping season. Most stores big and small rely on the season to make ends meet. It is very vital to our damaged economy. I have no problem with that. It just seems like it has gotten way out of hand, especially when I turn on the tube and get bombarded by loud, obnoxious ads trying to beat their way into my skull. I kill the volume or just change the channel and chase that with a large dose of Tylenol.

It really takes the fun out of the holiday season, which is one of my favorites. For me, it is a time of family, home-cooked feasts and fond personal memories of faith and the spirit of giving. It’s a time of sparkling lights from the tree, the decorations about the home, the town and on the windows or yard. It means different things to each of us. From the religious aspects for many faiths to the secular traditions and tales that have sprung up, some of these traditions go back centuries. I love all those that bring out the best in us, no matter the origin.

It is a time of childhood wonder and a time for adults to recall fond memories of the past. It touches us all in some way. It is more than a huge sale at o’ dark 30 in the morning; more than a mob rushing through a store’s front door that tramples the slow, battling it out for that gizmo or hot toy like animals just to save — or worse, to make — a buck.

The saddest thing is that these stores not only advertise this stuff, they encourage and even cheer this kind of stupidity. It has been a source of complaint for some since the industrial revolution, but this year it seems to have ratcheted up to an all time high. I don’t know how you feel about this, but it makes me ill.

What a proud example to show to our children. It goes against everything the holiday season is all about. It chucks the concepts of good will toward all men, peace on earth and it is better to give than to receive out the window and into the dirty slush. That’s replaced with mobs of greedy adults who wish to beat the next person — sometimes literally — for a sales item, gizmo or toy.

Personally, I don’t need Wally World or whoever telling me in the newspapers, the radio or the blasted TV that this kind of mentality is a part of the holidays. I really do wish they would all just shut up. (Yeah I know, good luck with that.) Whether it is Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the day after Christmas or New Year’s Day, these sales and the mayhem they can spawn are nothing but a boil on the behind, a major pain in the … well I can’t say that now, can I?

Wasilla resident Daniel D. Grota retired from the U.S. Army after more than 21 years of service.