The Popcorn Stand: Happy HalloThanksMas everybody

In my latest I’m old fuddy duddy and I wished things were the same as when I was a kid (you know when life was harder, but better) rant, I’m still trying to get used to this merging of the holidays and practically everything in our society.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact the first game of the World Series and the opening night of the NBA season for the defending champions — were played on the same night in the same city — less than a week before Halloween.

Not that I really care about Halloween. I can take or leave Halloween. Never was much for dressing up. As far as I can remember I never wore a Halloween costume. I’m sure I wore a Halloween costume when I was like 4 or 5 years old, I just don’t remember.

Yes, Halloween is the one excuse to buy candy I don’t need for trick-or-treaters who never come. And of course, as I’ve written before, I’m still trying to figure out why anybody decided to turn corn into candy.

And I do think it was pretty cool that in Nevada last year, we celebrated Halloween on Nevada Day and we celebrated Nevada Day on Halloween. As I understand it, we get to do this every 15 years or so.

But it would be nice if we didn’t have to start celebrating HalloThanksMas in mid-October. So in my effort to get a head start on the holidays by writing this, I’m already late.

I used to like Thanksgiving until it just became basically what’s now an early Christmas. I don’t know exactly when this happened just like George Carlin when he stated he didn’t know when exactly it happened, but sometime during his lifetime, toilet paper became bathroom tissue.

What we now know as Black Friday, which has become Black Thanksgiving, which I think is now Black Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I think is something that’s happened in the last 15 to 20 years or so.

I remember in 1993 I was assigned to do a story on Black Friday. I didn’t go out until Friday afternoon, the stores were virtually empty and as I remember it the gist of the story was why would anyone shop a day after they gorged themselves to just get a head start on Christmas?

Now if you wait until the Friday afternoon after Thanksgiving to shop for Christmas, it’s already too late.

So before it’s too late (if it isn’t too late already), Happy HalloThanksMas everybody.

— Charles Whisnand