• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, December 10, 2014

It’s the nightmare before Christmas. 

Exhibit A: “The Great Christmas Light Fight” on ABC. Exhibit B: The sheer tonnage of holiday retail advertising on TV this season.

This is only the third paragraph of this blog post and I can already predict how some readers will react to the rest of it. “Well, what does this blogger expect advertisers to do in December -- not run commercials?” one will likely ask indignantly. “It’s the busiest sales season of the year and all retailers depend for their livelihoods on having a successful holiday shopping season!”

“People like you complain about this every year! If you don’t like it, turn off the TV set!” another reader might advise.

“You’re an idiot!” still another reader might exclaim. (Don’t worry -- I’m used to that one.)

To address Complaints 1 and 2: I am well aware of the importance of this season to the bottom line of the nation’s retailers. I am also aware of the inevitability every year, at this time of year, of this onslaught of retail advertising. (As for Complaint No. 3, you’ll get no argument from me on that one.) 

Still, there is something about the volume of it this year that has surprised even me. Usually, the din of holiday-sale commercials emanating from my TV set at holiday time just goes in one ear and out the other. The models -- men, women and children -- who are seen posing in new sweaters and winter coats in the Macy’s and Target ads are usually just audiovisual wallpaper to me.

And in seasons past, I have practically welcomed the Lexus ads -- the spots featuring Lexuses with a giant gift bow on their roofs -- as one of the sure signs that another festive holiday season is upon us.

But this year, for reasons I cannot quite explain (an admission that has also been known to serve as a trigger for reader complaints), the ads seem especially unseemly. That is likely due in part to the fact that the Christmas selling season always seems to grow longer each year, with the ads starting earlier.

In addition, where in years past steep price reductions weren’t really offered (or advertised) until after Christmas, these days everything seems to be on sale before Christmas -- a situation that makes this season’s retail advertising come across as desperate, as if retailers are literally begging for your business.

As a group, the commercials I’m seeing this season are anything but festive. And except for a little fake snow in some of them, these commercials and the sales they are announcing could have run at any other time of the year.

At the risk of being “that guy” who complains about this every year, the retail advertising I’m seeing this year has me wondering more than ever if Christmas (or, to use the preferred, politically correct term, “the holidays) is now nothing more than just a big excuse for going out and mindlessly buying stuff -- whether we need (or want) it or not.

But wait, there’s more. If Christmas has devolved into just a big shopping spree for many, then for many others it has become an opportunity for blinding our neighbors with grotesque light displays. The biggest and brightest of these exhibitions are being showcased on ABC in its annual competition series called “The Great Christmas Light Fight,” which returned for its new season on Monday night.

On this show, homeowners who spend many thousands of dollars annually setting up computer-controlled light displays on their suburban lawns and houses -- attracting crowds and traffic to otherwise quiet cul-de-sacs -- compete against each other for $50,000 in prize money.

Using the word “tacky” to describe these installations doesn’t begin to describe them. “If you can’t see it from space, it ain’t worth doin’!” declared one slack-jawed participant who was seen on the show on Monday.

Another boasts that his property is festooned with 2 million lights -- 1 million more than a competitor he saw on the show last season. 

“The $50,000 is ours!” exclaimed one couple seen on Monday’s show (they hadn’t won the money yet; they were merely expressing their hope that they would win). 

Amid all the blinking lights and music on one man’s property in Springfield, Mo., he had created a brightly lit sign in simulated neon that read: “Jesus: The Reason for the Season.” 

Bill O’Reilly, take note: At least ABC didn’t title this show “The Great Holiday Light Fight.”