The root problem here is that the purpose of holidays in general has been lost. To far to many people all holidays are just extra days off work for the guys to drink beer and the women to go shopping. A big part of that misunderstanding developed when we moved holidays from their proper and meaningful days (meaningful if only in that they were the originally-established days) to Mondays and Fridays so that we would merge them with weekends and use them as recreational time. We separated the holiday from its original day and from its meaning as well. Many of our holidays are religious at their root. Many of them somehow involve wars or the military or something. Some of them honor people who, when put under the electronmicroscope of modern political correctness aren't 100.00000000% worthy of being honored (George Washington, for example -- who I was taught back when I was in school to revere as "the father of our country" -- for all the great things he did, also own slaves). As a result of all of this political incorrectness associated with our traditional holidays, some people are trying even more to disassociate the holidays with their original meanings. And the retailers are right there to provide a whole new meaning for holidays: shopping!
