Yesterday afternoon I walked into a prominent Tucson framing store to pick up some artwork. I was immediately assaulted by a dippy version of “It’s A Jingly Jangly Jolly Holy Holly Santa Sleigh Ride” or some such. Really awful it was. I barrelled straight up to the counter and barked at the salesman: “You are not playing Christmas music on November 11!”

“They started playing it on October 31st, mate,” he replied. “How do you think I feel? I’m going completely mad.” Yes, he was very funny charming and—like me—not originally from around here. We went on to commiserate about the cheesy and repetitive Christmas songs and I realized that, much as this tacky fodder is irritating to shoppers, it must be soul destroying for the store employees who have to exist with it 24/7 during the run-up to our country’s most blatantly corporate-sponsored holiday.

Edvard Munch's "The Scream" may have been based on a shopper's pre-Christmas listening experience. National Gallery, Oslo. Public domain image.

I discussed this matter with a friend yesterday evening, and her professional opinion as a wordly Tucsonan and bon vivant is that it’s acceptable to begin with the Elvis Christmas songs on November 15, and then gradually degenerate down to the sappiest and most obnoxious material by December. From the sublime to the ridiculous.

Wiser people than I have noted that the piranha-like pre-Christmas commercial feeding frenzy begins earlier each year. Store managers used to patiently hold their breath until the day after Thanksgiving before unleashing their sleigh bells and reindeer playlists (particularly absurd lyrical content here in the desert). Now the dreaded debut has been moved up to early November. That means we are forced, while attempting to complete our normal, civilian, non-Christmas shopping tasks to endure mind-numbing ditties for seven weeks out of the year.

I predict that next year the store managers who are hungriest to cash in on what was once a happy family-based religious event will start up with the nonsense in mid-September. Within a decade the need to maximize pre-Christmas profit will mean we are required to listen to pop pap year-round. Laughing and drinking will be banned and if you don’t sport a colorful Santa and the reindeers magnet on the back of your car, you may be rounded up by the Department of Homeland Security for anti-social and un-American behavior.

It truly is the Nightmare Before Christmas.

A few days ago I rose early and went out for a walk. It was a lovely morning and I thought a brisk stroll would clear my head and help prepare me for another long and busy day. As I reached the end of my driveway, I noticed what I took to be some garbage lying in the road in front of my house. I like a tidy place, so I picked it up with the intention of disposing of it properly.

It was not, strictly speaking, garbage but rather a 188-page, full color, printed Avon catalog in a clear plastic bag. A lot of care had been put into the photography, design and printing of the catalog, but it had been treated like garbage. I think it’s fair to assume that a local representative, or the rep’s hired help, had left it there for me, in the gravel, on the road, much like a cat might leave a dead field mouse on your doorstep. How very thoughtful! I am not married and no women live in my house (except my cat), so we have little need for makeup, except perhaps when the All Souls Procession rolls around, and somehow All Souls doesn’t really feel like an Avon-style event to me.

The Avon rep had not mailed the catalog to me, or knocked on my door to ask if I would like to receive a copy. No, it had been deposited on the street in front of my house. As I continued with my walk, I noticed that every single residence in my neighborhood had also been a victim of unsolicited dumping. Some catalogs were in driveways, some on the ground near mailboxes, some randomly thrown on city roads. Scores of them, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands, who knows? It was most unsightly.

Advertising or littering?

This isn’t advertising, it’s littering. If Avon, or any other company, feels the need to bother me with promotional material they should be required to pay postage and mail it to me, not throw it on the ground for me to clean up later. Northwest Explorer does the same thing, so do those entertaining Jehova’s Witnesses (always so well dressed and very serious), and so do the Fill A Bag For A Vet People (the bag people I don’t mind, it’s charity, and they are trying help our needy veterans), but the rest should be held accountable. Why should I, and every one of my neighbors, have to walk to the end of our driveways to pick up somebody else’s discarded paperwork?

Imagine if everyone did it. Imagine if everyone who mailed unwanted stuff to you—supermarkets, car lube joints, credit card companies, bogus loan outfits, and the rest of them—left their junk mail in a heap in front of your house, and your neighbors’ houses. Greater Tucson would rapidly become a king-size rubbish dump. It’s like spam, only worse. At least spam doesn’t burn up natural resources (water, ink, paper, electricity for printing presses, staplers, paper folders, and gasoline for driving from house to house) to quite the same degree.

Out of fairness I telephoned my Avon rep, a Ms. Debbie Calvillo (her name and contact info were rubber stamped on the back of the catalog in barely-legible blue letters), to ask her opinion on the advertising vs. littering issue. She was polite and friendly but seemed confused, so in order to clarify I asked if she felt it was okay to drop catalogs in front of people’s houses—an act that some would consider littering. She quickly asked for my address, “So I won’t litter in front of your house any more,” she explained. I asked again if she felt it was okay to distribute advertising material in this way and she said: “Yes, I get it in front of my house all the time.” At which point she hung up on me. I guess that means if somebody does it to you, it’s okay to do it back to somebody else.

I appreciate that Ms. Calvillo is likely a nice young lady trying to make a few extra bucks and I certainly do not begrudge her that. It’s hard to make ends meet for most of us. I also don’t have any kind of beef with Avon. I’m sure they make many people happy with their products. But littering is littering, unwanted junk mail is curse upon us all, and I expect reputable companies to be more responsible about the way in which they advertise. I figure a couple of letters to the BBB and the Tucson City Manager on the ad dumping issue are warranted. Anyone care to join me? If we don’t do something about the rabid and uncontrolled advertising in our community, you’ll one day soon have to climb over piles of unwanted paper just to reach your own mailbox on your own property.

And don’t even get me started on the highway billboards. “Only another bla-bla miles until ‘The Thing.’”