It’s been Christmas around here for a while, as far as the stores and restaurants are concerned. The Jingle Bells and Holly Jollies started weeks ago almost everywhere we shop or eat, and the aisles in Target and Wegmans and Michaels are full of already-discounted decorations and holiday-themed housewares.
What, you don’t have a Christmas-themed Spreader Set? You barbarian.
I hate that I’m always pressured into starting “Christmas” immediately after Thanksgiving, but that seems to be the way it works around here. Six seconds after your first post-Thanksgiving-turkey burp, an elf pops up and yells “CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS!!! GO GO GO!!!” while waving a Macy’s Black Friday Sale flyer as a starting flag.
BUY ALL THE THINGS!!
I usually resist decorating my own home and allowing the Christmas spirit to permeate my being until I can flip the calendar over to December. Too early and the music will annoy me too soon. All the snowman cookies will be eaten long before I’m supposed to leave some for Santa. And I’ll forget which presents I’ve bought for whom and end up buying much more than I need.
But this year, I started early.
I’m going to claim that this year’s super-late Thanksgiving coerced me into obeying the starting elf. A late Thanksgiving means that there are only four weekends between the holidays, which means a whole lot less time to get anything done, especially when you factor in parties and family get-togethers. I had a whole Friday to myself. I was kept from sleeping in by the army of leaf-blowers clearing the neighbor’s yard. I wasn’t going to fight the Black Friday crowds for discount cheese knives. Why not haul out all the Christmas crap and decorate?
I won’t lie… I’m usually one of the early birds. Our house is usually the first in the neighborhood to be decked out with lights. Part of my reasoning is that if I am going to go through ALL that trouble of decorating and putting Christmas stuff all over the house…. do it early enough so it will be there for a while to make it worth the effort!! Although this year we are very late, and here it is Dec. 1 and we aren’t finished.
We decorated our house over the weekend too. I like having the decorations up… when we take them down in January, the house will seem naked!