Listen, I know there are market forces at work initiating the removal of the camp chairs and tiki torches. But that doesn’t give you the right to move us all into late October. It’s still August, you assholes.

A quick celestial reminder. Summer ends on Sept. 22, when we are halfway between the longest and shortest days of the year. It’s called an equinox. In your giant store it’s always 72 degrees and fluorescent, so I realize this means nothing to you. But trust me, I have seen the latest sunset and it’s still fucking August. As in barebeques and beach balls and mojitos.

And yet I notice your cardboard Frankenstein monsters and five-pound bags of Tootsie rolls and pink fairy princess costumes and plastic pumpkins and it’s not Halloween, you bastards. That’s October 31, and if you are checking the math, you are skipping two months there. Important ones, too.

I realize that August has no marketable holidays, which when you think about it is a gross oversight by Congress. But the first weekend in September has Labor Day. I can’t prove it at the moment, but I believe this was intended to recognize the essential workers who sell us things at stores on every holiday. Why degrade their one day of recognition by forcing them to sell us purple and orange stockings? Who benefits? Only you.

Also, Labor Day signifies the traditional end to summer vacation and the beginning of the school year. But you skipped ahead. You had back-to-school specials right after the Fourth of July, at a time when the only kids who going back to school were the poor saps the district suggested could use “continued learning.” Your rows of camo backpacks and yellow boxes Crayola of markers sent shivers down the spines of other kids who had been begging for s’mores supplies. I know because I was with a few of those kids.

No, for you pushy pricks, summer was back in April. Have you thought about what you are doing to us? You’re like a waiter asking what we’ll have for desert before bringing out dinner. Can’t we just sniff the carnitas of life before you shove flan under our nose? Is it too much to ask to be able to buy plastic pool toys all the way through the hottest month of the year? It’s August.

Since you have forced the discussion, let’s talk about Halloween. Culturally speaking, this is an Irish holiday falling just before the hallowed Roman Catholic holiday, All Saints Day. I say “hallowed” because it’s also know as All Hallows Day, a moment to remember all the pious women and men who dedicated their lives to serving others and their God. Before things got especially pious, one had to worry about the especially spooky. The eve of All Hallows Day was … put it together. You take the Irish, move them to America, they don’t carve turnips, they carve pumpkins, they knock on doors. Bada-boom.

I’m not even going to argue with you about turning holidays into cheap crap from China. I mean, we lost that war long ago. And at least Halloween got to be called “creepy” and “satanic” for a lot longer than Pride Month, am I right? The price of being accepted around here, I will allow, is having your culture sold as t-shirts (rainbow for Pride, black and orange for Halloween, pink and purple for Easter, and so forth). You aren’t mainstream if you aren’t on the display racks in the front.

I would like to ask you, on behalf of humanity, for the opportunity to observe the changing of the seasons at the time the seasons are actually changing. Just to pick a random example, take Christmas. I’m not even going to get into what this holiday about. Could be about the birth of Jesus Christ. Could be about the Roman cult around Sol Invictus. Could be about Santa Claus and Coke. I’m setting that aside. See me? I’m picking that who steaming shit pile and placing it over there. Also, that awful Halloween-Christmas-tree hybrid, which is an abomination. It goes with the steaming shit pile.

What everyone can agree on, my friend, is this stuff happens in the dark of winter. Not to badger you with more astronomy, but it’s kinda important to our species, so just remember that this is the time in our hemisphere when days go from being shorter and shorter to longer and longer. So, that’s the key factor here.

And yet you, you godless savages, I know what you are going to do. You’ve already made orders. Fucking shipping logistics have been worked up. About a week before Halloween, in the middle of October, you’re going to spring Christmas on us.

You assholes.

You can’t tell us that to purchase holiday merch is to observe the holiday, you can’t convince us all we aren’t doing Halloween right unless we buy your 18-foot tall inflatable Jack Skelington, and then keep us from buying said merch at the actual time of the holiday. That’s just cruel. We’re going to be excited to go get some high fructose corn syrup bombs, maybe a sexy pirate costume, a cinematic bloodfest, and you motherfuckers are going to yank it all out from underneath us. We’re going to faithfully visit the store, and it’s going to be full of snow globes and wreaths and shit. What a mind fuck.

So here’s the deal — fuck you. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to celebrate the shit out of something you don’t stock on the shelves. Maybe I’m going to be the damned king of Thanksgiving. That’s right, you bastards. You thought you merged it with Christmas, like it was a half-football, half-shopping pre-December fluffing of the American shopper. But maybe now I’m going to Thanksgiving it up. Hard core. I don’t give a fuck about what those people did back in the day. Pilgrims, Native Americans, cranberries. Doesn’t matter. What matters is some seasonal celebration. I will make myself a funky hat. I will put buckles on my shoes, my belt, my fucking funky hat and maybe my sleeves., too I will buckle up for fun.

And then, I’m going get myself a turkey. Ha! I know. The one thing you had on me was selling me a turkey for the only time of the year when anyone eats a whole damn turkey. But I’ll go kill one instead. How about that? Then what are you going to do? Sell me some handi-wipes for my bloody hands? Too late. I’ll lick them off.

But first, mojitos. Because, you ass holes, it’s still August.