Christmas should be stuck in a box and kicked down the stairs

Working in the retail business makes Christmas much less exciting than it used to be as a kid. We start putting out all the Christmas merchandise 2 weeks before Halloween, yes HALLOWEEN. That's the first thing I don't understand. I mean, it kind of makes sense to put stuff out early so that people can start to plan out what their Christmas decorations will look like but who really does that and all I ever hear is people bitching about how they hate to see Christmas before Thanksgiving, let alone before Halloween.

So after dealing with Christmas for 2 and a half months, you'd imagine my relief the first year I worked in retail, thinking that in January all the Christmas merchandise would go away. Well to my surprise... Christmas doesn't go away in the retail world, even if consumers don't see it all year round, we deal with it almost all year.

After Christmas is over, mid January is the time when we go down to the merchandise mart in Chicago and BUY MORE CHRISTMAS for the following December. After ordering in January and the lingering sale Christmas items in February, we only get a few short months with out a spec of Christmas. Because sure enough when our busiest season at the Garden Center are over.. guess what starts coming in! When June rolls around, boxes and boxes of Christmas Merch starts coming in via fedex and UPS. We stick in on the shelves in the warehouse for the time being trying not to think about it. But we know that once July comes around we'll have to start opening those boxes and creating the items in our system and pricing them so that we don't get behind and have to rush to get all the items out in October.

I luckily still enjoy the Holiday season and Christmas time, but sometimes I want to ring its little next, stick it in a box, tape it up real tight, and kick it down a few flights of stairs, especially in October when its too soon and January when I don't want to think about it anymore.

And don't even get me started on 93.9 the lite, who I've been told has already started playing ONLY Christmas music. I refuse to listen to that station before Thanksgiving and outside of work. After Thanksgiving until Christmas at the work place is the only time its acceptable. And even then I get sick of it.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest I'm going to go walk around the store and look at Christmas ornaments.