Can we get past Thanksgiving first?

I love Christmas. It's my favorite holiday for so many reasons: the sights, the sounds, the smells, even the fact that it's an entire season.

But I have a problem with celebrating Christmas long before Thanksgiving. Heck, stores start putting out Christmas candy and decorations before Halloween! Why is that? Do they think people are trying to get a jump on their Christmas decorating and stocking stuffers in October?

Even one local radio station started playing all-Christmas music all the time in October.

So why wouldn't I, a proclaimed Christmas-lover, like seeing people start celebrating early?

First, because it seems to negate the other holidays that precede Christmas.

Second, because by the time Christmas day arrives, it's anti-climactic. By December 25, I'm sick of looking at the tree, watching "How the Grinch stole Christmas," and hearing carols. And that, my friends, is so unlike me!

When I was a younger woman, I used to have all my shopping and wrapping done by Thanksgiving. Then the first week of December I worked on the decorations, the second week I wrote out and mailed the Christmas cards, and leading up to Christmas eve I baked cookies. I was a regular Christmas elf.

Of course that was all B.C. (Before Children.) Now, I'm lucky if I remember to schedule the kids' portraits in time to get the photos into the cards that I'm writing out December 23. Cookies? Who has time for that? Rush, rush, rush. That's reality anymore. And early reminders that Christmas is only so many days away puts people in that secular mindset of what's "expected" to be done by the 25th.


It shouldn't be about buying, buying, buying and debt, debt, debt. Christmas should be recalling the beautiful story of the birth of Jesus. It should be about advent, reflection, and prayer. It should be about doing small kindnesses for others - maybe singing carols to neighbors or the elderly, or making a collage for the special people in your life, or just setting up a manger instead of the 10,000 lights outside the house.

Hmmm...maybe we should be grateful to those "organized" people who have their decorations up by November 15 and start our thinking about Christmas so early.

Nah!