Those Reese’s Trees Aren’t the Only Thing to Get Angry About

With all of the serious problems facing our country today—home-grown terrorists killing people, social injustice, racial and gender inequality, guns, police brutality, corrupted elected officials, people fighting tooth and nail to make sense of a world trying to fill them with fear—it’s good to take action against the things that mean the most to us.

Naturally, finding out that 2015’s holiday-themed Reese's Peanut Butter Trees look more like amorphous blobs than they do Christmas trees is a major issue— and just a small portion of the much larger holiday treat situation.

Size matters

While it may be what you DO with your "tree" in other areas of life (YES, the bedroom), size DOES matter when it comes to candy. Not only are the trees just random shapes at this point, but they've gotten smaller *and* gone up in price. Yeah, we get the concept of inflation, but you don't get to raise the price and cut the product. One or the other. Unfortunately, we're so addicted to those damn trees, you sort of have us over a barrel, Reese's.

Some of us are still just trying to snag pumpkin-shaped stuff on clearance

\Walgreens, Target, CVS -- can we not put the Christmas candy out on 11/1? Can we just have a minute to sort and steal all of the Halloween candy we (our kids/nephews/officemates) just collected? Can we take a breather before we move on to the next candy collecting season?

Christmas candy corn = gross

This abomination shall not stand. Candy corn in and of itself is already disgusting and should be thrown in the trash, but to appropriate a Halloween-specific candy and tart it up in red, white and green? No. Leave the devil's candy where it belongs. October.

But what happened to Archway Christmas Tree cookies?

The Bells and Stars seem to maybe still be around, but this is an actual legit Christmas item, and it's seemingly nowhere to be found. But you're gonna try and make Christmas candy corn? Sad.

The lights. The lites. The LITE.

It used to be that the day after Thanksgiving, radio stations would start sprinkling a few Christmas songs into the rotation here and there. As Christmas approached, the frequency of airplay would increase, until the 48 hours before Christmas day were completely Christmas songs. Then, someone got the bright idea to turn an entire easy listening station into a Christmas station around December 1st. Then the day after Thanksgiving. Then someone lost their mind, now and it starts mid-November.

Why?

Why would you do this?

Who is singing “Silent Night” on November 11th? Who hears “Silver Bells” before the turkey is even in the oven? Who can even bear to think of that fucking Little Drummer Boy more than they have to before an Advent calendar is busted open? If there *is* a war on Christmas, it is the onslaught upon our ears of premature chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

You’re an adult with an elf doll

Elf on a Shelf. STOP IT. It used to be good enough to say that Santa was watching, or that he was making a list of who was "naughty and nice." Perhaps you could just reference his elves. But now you're gonna get an elf doll, move the thing around, and creepily haunt your kids with its presence in the hopes that its nightly surveillance will keep them in line? It's weird; it's odd; it needs to stop. Now.

St. Nick’s is the Nicorette of Christmastime

Instead of using the aforementioned 1984 Big Brother method to get your kids to act like decent human beings in the hopes that Santa will bring them something with Elsa on it in commemoration of the birth of Jesus near the Winter Solstice, you can offer them a stopgap -- St. Nick's! It's a Germanic holiday held the night of December 5th. Put some shoes or stockings out, and if you haven't been a right old little dick, you might get some fruit or candy or maybe a little gift to hold you over until the big day. Coal is the threat here, but maybe we can modernize it to be GMO vegetables or something. We grew up with St. Nicholas Day taking the edge off, but so many people don't have a clue. We need to make this a priority.

So don't worry about blob trees, people. They still taste delicious. Worry about having to hear "Do They Know It's Christmas?” before someone asks you what couture your Elf on the Shelf is  wearing this season. Worry about someone trying to slip you a piece of Christmas candy corn. Worry about the stuff that, you know, really matters.

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Jocelyn Geboy (@smussyolay) is a writer and improviser who founded Three Left Productions and blogs for Chicago Now at An Unquiet Chicagoan.