Yule be sorry

Already, it feels like the home stretch.

It shouldn’t. There are two months left before the end of the year, and so it seems premature to be setting sights on Christmas and beyond; it’s a bit like looking forward to St. Patrick’s Day at the beginning of January. Of course, depending on your predilection for Irish whiskey and pummeling hangovers, that may be a moot analogy.

It’s hard to tell which came first: Advertisers’ early promotion of holiday sales, or our own early excitement over the holidays themselves. Did advertisers sense our eagerness, or did they cause it? Either way, the colorful hubbub that closes out each year feels like a rock band pummeling their instruments during an anthem’s violent finale, only the finale lasts for two months and leaves you broke and bloated on sugar cookies.

Ultimately, whether it’s due to the whims of ad executives or our own anticipation, advertising has extended the season into a marathon. This year, I saw my first holiday commercial, a pitch for a department store, days before trick-or-treaters started their neighborhood skulking. Hearing sleigh bells in the middle of a zombie movie is a disorienting experience, and borderline uncomfortable. Christmas ads aired before Thanksgiving are premature; Christmas ads aired before Halloween are an abomination, ranking up there on the Offend-O-Meter next to public flatulence and Joe Biden’s hair.

Aired during the right time of year, holiday ads can provide for some memorable moments, such as Santa Claus riding through the snow on a giant Norelco shaver, or polar bears finding comfort in an ice-cold bottle of Coke. Even though both of those ad campaigns have been off the air for years, people of certain generations remember them fondly, and speak about them each Christmas with a touch of nostalgia, as if the ads were friends who had moved away and no longer call. In a perfect world, these would be the only ads aired during the entire month of December, with exceptions granted to the embarrassing holiday-themed efforts of local car dealerships.

The problem with these ads, though, is timing, not content. If advertising and television executives adhered to a strict rule of not allowing holiday-themed spots to air before Thanksgiving, we would feel a lot less saturated with visions of sugarplums. Instead of rolling our eyes at the 847th airing of a Macy’s spot in which the same smiling girl wears the same sparkling coat that’s an astounding 40 percent off, we’d get an appropriate dose and move onto the next phase of our lives: Figuring out where and with whom we’ll get hammered on New Year’s.

There’s plenty to be said about the content, sure: The gross over-commercialization, the abuse of Santa’s reputation as a pitchman, the overall creepiness of elves. (Am I the only one who feels this way? I feel like hell would be making rocking horses on an assembly line sandwiched between two vacant-eyed elves. Maybe that’s just me.)

But we’re savvy. We’ve got our guard up for a commercialized holiday. We know that, for weeks leading up to Christmas, we’ll be assaulted with a panoply of jolly snowmen, glittery wrapping paper, and cherubic carolers singing about bargains.

What our guard isn’t equipped to handle is a holiday ad season that starts before Halloween. It offends sensibilities established through years of yuletide routines and rhythms. And it makes the holidays more exhausting than they already are. As it is, the day after Christmas feels like the first sweaty, air-gulping moments at the end of a three-legged sack race.

Plus, there’s the kicker: It makes time in general go by way too quickly. Five minutes ago it was Christmas 2011. Then I turned around to pick stray tinsel off my butt and boom, I was writing this rant.

And so I humbly fall to my knees, raise my hands to the sky, and beg advertisers not to get too eager this holiday season. I know you can’t wait to inform the public about killer deals on useless gadgets, but at least wait until the turkey gravy has had a chance to clog our veins.

This is that weird limbo before the storm hits us. Without the intrusion of squirm-inducing elves, we should at least have the chance to enjoy it.