December 18, 2009

Please Put the Christmas Commercials Away And No One Will Get Hurt

posted by Leann Sweeney

I am one of those people who get the Christmas blues every single year. But for once I am beginning to understand part of the reason. It's those darn commercials that begin in early November and continue on for more than two months--because they keep on selling stuff at bargain prices long past New Years. Not really bargains, but they sure want you to think so.

Lipstick kiss Okay, longest running least favorite Christmas commercial? "Every kiss begins with Kay." If that's true, then how did I give birth to two children without ever receiving anything from that jewelry store? Because, I must admit,  kissing was involved in creating those children. So Kay is lying about EVERY kiss. And I am so disappointed in them for perpetuating that fairy tale year after year.

Hershey kiss Next, the Hershey's kisses pretending to be bells. Annoying as all get out and yes, part of that annoyance is because I am allergic to chocolate. Do not keep reminding me, Hershey's. I'm depressed, remember?

People singing on mountain tops and trying to make us believe that Coke will make us all smile and hold hands and love one another. Coke is connected to dental visits, lap band surgery and Jenny Craig. Oh, and New Years Resolutions that will be forgotten by the time the Super Bowl rolls around.

Target Target convincing the gullible public that they can give their families everything they ever wanted and not overspend. No one ever bought one item at Target. Not in the history of the universe. On average, if people are like me, they walk out of Target having spent about twenty times more than they decided they would spend when they came in the door.

Toys 'R Us telling me over and over and over that I can shop at 3AM. Even when my kids were small, you wouldn't find me shopping in a toy store at that hour. So quit telling me to do this. I don't like your tactics or your commercials, Toys 'R Us.

Big bows on luxury cars. Raise your hand if you ever got a $50,000 car for Christmas. Have I made my point?

Trailers for Christmas movies. By the time I have watched each trailer 500 times on TV, I have had all I can take. Why go to a movie if you know the whole plot or heard all the best jokes?

Budweiser_clydesdales But there are a series of commercials that air at the holidays every year that I actually look forward to. And watch with a smile on my face. The Clydesdales. Yup. They could run those commercials all year long and I'd never tire of them. 

I'm not completely bah-humbugged if I can enjoy one or two commercials, right?


Leann Sweeney
By Leann Sweeney
Dec 18, 2009 9:09:52 AM | Leann's posts

10 Comments

Mason

Love the Clydesdales too. They are one of the reason I watch the Super Bowl each year. They do have some memorial commercials, maybe it's because they don't run them in the ground like the other guys.

Posted by: Mason | December 18, 2009 at 09:34 AM

Sheila Connolly

I'm beginning to hate that one (Target?) where mommy opens a big-screen TV and says, look what Santa brought! And she and hubby get into a polite fight about her over-spending while the kids stare at them.

I always wonder how they make the gigantic bows on those cars, and how they make them stick.

But on a happier note, I love the American Express commercials with the "smiles." I watch them intently and always find things I missed that last time around--and they always make me smile.

Posted by: Sheila Connolly | December 18, 2009 at 10:12 AM

Mare F

You are a discerning commercial viewer and advertisers had best beware. I fully agree with you once again. I normally tune out commercials and quite frankly think that instead of killing all of the lawyers first the advertising community should be given a fair shake at being moved to the top of the list. I do love the Clydesdales....but then, how could you not?

Posted by: Mare F | December 18, 2009 at 10:22 AM

Ritaestelle Christiano

The Clydesdales are the handsdown winner in the comercial department. I never tire of them either. The current Target commercials are totally reprehensible. I don't even get some of them! The ad agent that sold the concept to the marketing people at Target must have some charisma cause I don't understand why any company would spend a penny on those commercials! They are condesending and totally depressing.

Posted by: Ritaestelle Christiano | December 18, 2009 at 02:24 PM

Angela (signlady217)

I get a huge kick out of the freecreditreport.com commercials. My fav is I think the first one, where they're living in the parents' basement because of her bad credit, but they all make me laugh every time one of them comes on! Those guys are hilarious! I'm just glad my credit is great and I have my finances under control. And many of the Hallmark card commercials are pretty good, too; they usually make me tear up.

Posted by: Angela (signlady217) | December 18, 2009 at 05:59 PM

Gina Tallent

I HATE the Kay commercials. Just the other day I found myself screeching at the tv telling Kay just what they could kiss:)

Posted by: Gina Tallent | December 19, 2009 at 09:37 AM

Elysabeth

Let's add to the list - The Walmart commercials using the "Carol of the Bells" for their register lights and making it look like no matter what, their lanes will all be opened during the holidays - ha not a chance in you know where is that going to happen - they barely have half the registers open at any given time and most of the time only about 1/4 of them are really opened. So yep, long lines still abound. The new Best Buy commercials drive me nuts. Layaway for two weeks? Those commercials barely start around Thanksgiving and everything has to be off layaway by the middle of December - so what's the sense. And yes, those Kay commercials are annoying all year long -

I must not be watching too much TV because I've missed the Clysdale commercials - they are very heartwarming and more in tune with the spirit of Christmas and the holidays than any other since they aren't really selling the beer in a downright, in your face way.

So those are the few I have to add - E :)

Posted by: Elysabeth | December 19, 2009 at 11:18 AM

Mary Jane Maffini

I wasn't sure why I was depressed, but now it's clear! Thanks, Leann, as usual, you've made me laugh.

MJ (still shocked to find out that Kay's is lying - maybe that's why we don't have 'em in Canada. We have enough of our own whoppers.

Posted by: Mary Jane Maffini | December 19, 2009 at 06:57 PM

Jeanne

The Hess ads--catchy!

Posted by: Jeanne | December 24, 2009 at 12:34 AM

Rachel Brady

This is some good stuff, right here! Way to go, Leann. :-)

Posted by: Rachel Brady | December 24, 2009 at 06:51 PM

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A Very German Christmas posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken Many of our beloved Christmas customs originated in Germany--the carols, the decorated tree, and everybody who went to my school in the 1950s knows the story of Hans Gruber and the mice in the organ and how "Silent Night" got written. Although I love traditional family Christmas "stuff", I have always been drawn to Germany. When I had to research and write about a country in 6th grade, I chose Germany. That was before the two sectors were walled apart. I would never have remembered this, but my mother kept that report and gave it back to me when I was packing to go to Germany for my junior year from the University of New Hampshire. (Yeah, Mom kept stuff, but it's not like she was a candidate for "Hoarders" or anything.) I spent that junior year in the old city of Marburg an der Lahn, about 90 kilometers north of Frankfurt. It was before the days of email and cell phones and instant communications, and since I was a scholarship student, I couldn't fly home for the holidays. Some of my fellow UNH group also stayed in town for Christmas and we decided to make the best of it. We planned a special meal for Christmas eve, forgetting that everything would have to be prepared on a hotplate. I was astounded that one of my friends, albeit not known for her culinary skills, managed to screw up the add-water-and-make-cream-sauce frozen peas and onions. I bought a little live Christmas tree and had to get it across the city to a friend's room. It rains a lot in Germany, and Christmas Eve afternoon was no exception. It absolutely poured. (I used to quip that the cities were built on hills to facilitate runoff from the torrents.) I also didn't realize that the buses would stop running, so I was lucky to get on one of the last ones with my tree. The Germans never could figure out what to make of us Americans, and that evening was no exception. We all managed to gather, set up the little tree and decorate it with a few ornaments and, in the German tradition, with little candles that clipped to the branches. We put a few gifts under the tree and finally found enough courage to light the candles. Painfully aware of the fire danger, we admired the lovely sight for maybe twelve seconds, took some pictures, and (I swear I could hear a little crackling noise) blew out the candles before we caused a conflagration. After dinner and our tree ritual, we went to a midnight service in a medieval church in the old city, up on the hill. The rain had stopped and as we passed a wing of the castle, we watched a man decorating a huge tree in his living room, and a light snow began to frost everything. It was magic.
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DECORATING THE TREE Posted by Sheila Connolly (Sarah Atwell does only cactus) I had to go out and buy new Christmas tree lights this week. That shouldn't be a big deal, but it really brought home to me how much lights have changed since I first became aware of them. I have pictures of every tree my family had, starting in 1950 (left). I won't bore you with them all (unless you really, really want me to), but they are surprisingly consistent. We always had real trees, and we always decorated them the same way. We resisted (and continue to) artificial trees, including those trees pre-wired with all the lights. We resisted "theme" trees in single colors, especially pink. I'll admit we did for a time use tinsel (that strand-by-strand kind), but eventually abandoned it. Our tree-decorating was a tradition, and each year we would gather as a family, pulling each ornament out of the boxes (some of which are as old as I am), commenting on when and where we got them. My mother would sit back and supervise, dictating where each one should go, and how to balance the color distribution for the lights. It's a tradition I've tried to uphold ever since I officially left home, starting with the tree I had in my first apartment in Cambridge (right in the nice bay window in the front, facing Harvard Street), and the memorable tree in a later apartment for which my roommates and I enlisted the help of friends and neighbors at a party–which may explain why there were plastic molars (yes, teeth, from the orthodontist who lived upstairs) and carefully strung potato chips on that one. But I was going to talk about lights. My parents had twinkle lights long before they were common–the string even had its own transformer, and the bulbs were hard to find, but at least they lasted. Then they invented lights that twinkled without help, although they give out pretty quickly. More than a decade ago I found a string of "programmable" lights that did all sorts of things. This year I plugged them in and they refused to do half of their tricks, and I didn't like the ones that were left. I've found an all-white one that is close but not quite the same. A couple of years ago I found a fabulous short string of lights that actually changed colors! I love those, but I can't find any more of them, and I've already broken one of the fragile bulbs. So I was left with one string of standard bulbs that I bought in 1972, which looks just like the string of standard bulbs my parents bought in 1950. Obviously it was time to go shopping. I was surprised to find that there were pretty much only two choices: those (@#$%&*) little white/colored things (I have plenty of those, and I don't like them) and the more recent LED lights. I don't want to think of myself as a Luddite, so I bought a few strings, round and pointy (does that pointy form have a name? Does it think it's a pine cone? A flame?). And I'm going to grit my teeth and give them a try this year. I could go on and on about the ornaments. I was even going to give you a forensic analysis, zooming in on the pictures of the trees from the 1950s and demonstrating that, yes, I'm still using some of the same ornaments; a few have survived and are now semi-antiques–as am I, I guess. Of course new ones have been added over the years, so many that there's no longer room for all of them on one tree. My sister and I usually give each other at least one new ornament each year, which keeps increasing the collection. And this year we have two kittens who have no idea what a treat they're in for (we introduced Dexter to snow today, and he's quite confused), so I'm guessing we'll be using the indestructible wooden and plastic ones this year, rather than the heirloom ornaments. But I'm hoping I can get my (small) family to join in the decorating, and to remember the happy times of Christmases past. There's something magic about a twinkling, glowing tree covered with memories, isn't there? What's your favorite ornament?

Lorraine Bartlett

Five women, five weekdays, many surprises.

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