The holiday season is upon us. Between Halloween and New Year’s, the holidays come and go so fast that even Wal-Mart can’t keep up. You may have noticed that Thanksgiving supplies at Wal-Mart lasted a week, and then they changed to Christmas. It was at such a dizzying pace that many of us are still looking for Thanksgiving supplies. In keeping with the advanced efforts at commercializing our holidays, Valentine’s supplies will be available long before the first uncorking of a bottle on New Year’s Eve.

Holidays are so commercially important that we celebrate them on weekends, instead of the actual day, to maximize worker productivity and commercial success, i.e., the Veterans Day Parade being held on November 9 instead of November 11. That bit of commercialization spits in the face of the whole concept of Veterans Day. For those who don’t know, that war ended on the 11th month, on the 11th day, on the 11th hour. That is an important aspect of the Veterans Day parade for many veterans.

But alas, that is but one example of the lost message of our commercialized holidays. Many of us, boomers for sure, long for the old days when, seemingly, it was less commercial and more about family and the meaning of the holiday. Today, it seems that society focuses too much on the party for that holiday or how much they spend than on the meaning of the holiday as a measure of happiness. Aww, but this may be the moaning of an aging old guy. What do you think?