Holiday Speeding

I've always found it amusing that our market-driven world feels the need to always bounce from one holiday to another. No sooner is Halloween over then the Christmas decorations start popping up. Even on the 31, when I was driving home from a friends late at night, I could see the display of inflatable decorations inside the front door of Home Depot had changed from pumpkins and ghosts to Christmas trees and Santa riding a Harley. Clearly they wanted to be ready for the rush of people who would come charging through the doors the morning of November 1 demanding a full supply of inflatable lawn ornaments. I'm expecting the graveyards on my street to morph into winter wonderlands by the end of the day.

However, the decorations and the change in marketing tactics is old news, I've grown used to it over the past twenty years. What really got me was this morning, when I was walking down the hallway at school, and I passed the charitable table; a booth down the main hallway of Mount Royal that often campaigns for various charities or causes they want students to care about. Lately they've been fighting the good fight against H1N1 by squirting hand sanitizer at any student who falls into their clutches.

Over the past five semesters though, the charitable table does things like raise money for various causes by asking people for change and rewarding them by giving them a sugary treat like ice cream. Guess what their incentive was today? you guessed it, Candy Canes.

I find it slightly disheartening that on November 2 the desire to quickly jump ships from holiday to holiday has even spread to non-profits.