Skip to main content

Cranky Complaints-Lady asks, “Tis WHAT Season???”

imageEmail sent via Michael’s main website.  I have absolutely no hope that anybody will reply to me – ever.

In the Toronto Michael’s store today, I was annoyed to find a full display table and shelves of Chanukah merchandise. 

In case you weren't aware, we're currently right in the middle of a month of wonderful, major Jewish holidays - all far more significant than Chanukah, which is a relatively minor holiday. 

It seems that even with a fairly large religious Jewish clientele, nobody on staff has had the imagination to come up with a Jewish “fall holidays / harvest” theme to stave off the blue, white and silver just a few weeks longer.


It takes a lot to offend me [ha ha ha… what they don’t know won’t hurt them], and this display certainly did.  Think of it as tearing down the Xmas displays in December to make room for Valentine’s Day kitsch and maybe you'll understand why.

Comments

  1. strange succah decorations, maybe really for Purim?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, since Chanuka coincides with their major holiday, it must be that it's *our* major holiday as well. Didn'tcha know?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I totally hear you! I've started seeing it, too, and it's not time yet. Count me as another complaint lady. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I've always wondered why stores can't stay closer to the appropriate holidays for the season. It really irks me to see holiday stuff out months in advance! OK, so where I live all I see is the *other* holiday stuff, I would actually be thrilled to see Chanukah stuff out ANYWHERE around here :-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh, I think we could be friends (albeit ideologically diverse). If it makes you feel any better, I walked through a department store the other day dragging my three mortified children and commenting in my loud mommy voice that "Apparently these people can't read a calendar!! Don't they know that there is still Halloween and Thanksgiving before Christmas? This blatant commercialism is offensive. YES! I said offensive! Christmas is about Jesus and not about trees and spending money. IT'S SEPTEMBER!!! SEPTEMBER!!!" My 8 year old is threatening to disown me- but one of the store workers did say she thought it was gross, too.

    Michaels once informed me they set up for Christmas so early because "Crafting takes time" and that when they set up for one winter holiday "they set up for all of them". They didn't seem to enjoy me asking where the Diwali and Eid supplies were....

    ReplyDelete
  6. BTW I just noticed your subject tabs under your header (I hope they haven't been there all along...) and want to say it makes it so much quicker and easier to grab your printables :-)
    I did notice the change in the header right away at least.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Um...Around here, they DO put up the Valentine's Day merchandise in December. And the Christmas decor is just starting to appear now. I'm not surprised they started putting out the Chanukah items. They don't really look at any calendar except their sales calendars, where everything happens at least two months earlier. Maybe they're in a time warp. :o)

    Peace and Laughter!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Jugglingpaynes - I'm surprised that the xmas stuff is already coming out... used to be they'd give Halloween a fair shake and start the xmas stuff on November 1.

    Sigh... so not your rant, Jennifer, but it reminds me of how annoying it is to go shopping for clothes to wear now and only finding stuff for the next season.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I volunteer at a (Christian-based) thrift store. We have had Halloween stuff out for most of this month (not to mention free pumpkin pie for Canadian Thanksgiving), and they are already putting out tables of Christmas things. I guess even thrift stores have to follow the trends.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I love your comments!

Popular posts from this blog

לימודי קודש/Limudei Kodesh Copywork & Activity Printables

Welcome to my Limudei Kodesh / Jewish Studies copywork and activity printables page.  As of June 2013, I am slowly but surely moving all my printables over to 4shared because Google Docs / Drive is just too flaky for me. What you’ll find here: Weekly Parsha Copywork More Parsha Activities More Chumash / Tanach Activities Yom Tov Copywork & Activities Tefillah Copywork Pirkei Avos / Pirkei Avot Jewish Preschool Resources Other printables! For General Studies printables and activities, including Hebrew-English science resources and more, click here . For Miscellaneous homeschool helps and printables, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you just want to say Thank You, here’s a

Hebrew/ עברית & English General Studies Printables

For Jewish Studies, including weekly parsha resources and copywork, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you enjoy these resources, please consider buying my weekly parsha book, The Family Torah :  the story of the Torah, written to be read aloud – or any of my other wonderful Jewish books for kids and families . English Worksheets & Printables: (For Hebrew, click here ) Science :  Plants, Animals, Human Body Math   Ambleside :  Composers, Artists History Geography Language & Literature     Science General Poems for Elemental Science .  Original Poems written by ME, because the ones that came with Elemental Science were so awful.  Three pages are included:  one page with two po

What do we tell our kids about Chabad and “Yechi”?

If I start by saying I really like Chabad, and adore the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, z"l, well... maybe you already know where I'm headed. Naomi Rivka has been asking lately what I think about Chabad.  She asks, in part, because she already knows how I feel.  She already knows I’m bothered, though to her, it’s mostly about “liking” and “not liking.”  I wish things were that simple. Our little neighbourhood in Israel has a significant Chabad presence, and Chabad conducts fairly significant outreach within the community.  Which sounds nice until you realize that this is a religious neighbourhood, closed on Shabbos, where some huge percentage of people are shomer mitzvos.  Sure, it’s mostly religious Zionist, and there are a range of observances, for sure, but we’re pretty much all religious here in some way or another. So at that point, this isn’t outreach but inreach .  Convincing people who are religious to be… what? A lot of Chabad’s efforts here are focused on kids, including a