Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for November 01, 1986

Leave it to our consumerist nation to give Thanksgiving amiss and go straight to Christmas.

How much did YOU care about Thanksgiving when you were six?

will you barf now “milk duds”

How about those milk duds?

Of course, now they start Christmas in September, and run it concurrently with Halloween and Thanksgiving.

calvin just mentioned milk duds

Y’know, I distinctly remember laughing at this particular comic when it first appeared in the newspaper. The idea of stores breaking out Christmas merchandise on November 1 in 1986 was still patently ridiculous. Whether merchants were being graciously polite, or just hadn’t yet realized that season’s vital end-of-year economic uptick, in any case there was still an informal etiquette in place that reserved that commercial ceremony for the day after Thanksgiving (and even then, there wasn’t talk of ‘Black Friday’, except perhaps amongst overworked retail workers).

At this rate, I venture by 2046 Halloween, Thankgiving, Christmas and New Year’s will have blended into a single three-month-long holiday, perhaps backed by a vague “death-to-life” allegorical story of renewal (that Madison Avenue hasn’t quite cooked up yet).

Candy hangovers are almost as bad as tequila hangovers. Almost.

This is actually how Tim Burton got the idea for “Nightmare Before Christmas”.

I hate milk duds

At least my birthday comes exactly one week after Halloween!