Merry Christmas everyone. We wanted to be the first tell everyone this, but it seems as if the Memorial Union has beat us to it.

When walking into the Memorial Union on Sunday morning to work on the paper, many on the Washburn Review editorial board were dumbfounded. From wall to wall, evergreen, Christmas lights, snowmen and Christmas trees … err Holiday Trees … now don the walls of the Memorial Union.

Wasn’t Halloween just this past week? The weather is going to be in the 70s this week, surely it can’t be Christmas time yet. It isn’t even Thanksgiving yet. We’ve become so obsessed with the holiday spirit that we are skipping over everything else just to celebrate. If we celebrate too much gift giving though we will all be poor.

Christmas is far too commercialized anyway, why must we insist on making it worse? The only reason places like Dillons on 29th Street already has Santa on top of its roof is so people will start thinking about the holiday and start shelling out money for gifts and holiday goodies. It may sound illogical to start shopping now, but it’s even more illogical to buy your Christmas presents at Dillons.

These days, Christmas isn’t the only commercialized holiday. Halloween was created by the candy companies. Thanksgiving was created by the turkey companies, and Valentine’s Day was created by Hallmark and everyone who thinks pink and red go well together. Christmas was created by Mattel and the fruit cake companies. We sure hope God got a good deal when it was sold to them. Hey, he had to pay for the golden streets in heaven somehow.

Election Day is tomorrow, why don’t we have flags hanging around the Memorial Union instead? O wait…Washburn would get in trouble for endorsing the Republican party.

In all seriousness though, decorations this early take away from the true meaning behind Christmas. It’s a very special time for most people, and stretching that time out makes people get sick of it too early, and it turns into more of a burden than a happy time for family and friends. Don’t give in to this commercialization of Christmas. Bah-humbug.