Monday, December 12, 2011

Something I've Noticed And A Possible Theory

If you've been Christmas shopping lately, you might have noticed a certain pattern of speech in a lot of retail windows.




It seems like a bunch of places are no longer using complete, coherent sentences and instead just throwing words like "Joy" or "Merry" or "Give" together.






My theory about this new practice goes like this: retailers shied away from saying "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Hanukkah" because they don't want to alienate anybody. But they also feel like saying "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons Greetings" is too common or pedestrian– something your local muffler shop would say– so they invent new expressions, using seasonal keywords to conjure up "SHARE DELIGHT" or "UNWRAP ENCHANTMENT" or some other new age-y nondenominational horseshit that doesn't mean anything.








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