Every year just as summer starts to fade away, a nagging thought starts to slowly form in my mind. I feel it, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Then suddenly one day – boom! It hits me like a 2 ton saguaro cactus. I’m talking about the holiday season.
Remember the good old days when it actually was a season? Now it’s more like a holiday tornado. It comes out of nowhere, wreaks havoc and is gone before you even know what happened leaving a path of destruction. No more lounging by the fireplace, long strolls in the snow (well I live in Arizona so that was never gonna happen anyway), leisurely get togethers with friends and family.
What happened? Now I’ve barely put my swimsuit away before Santa Claus and his elves or reindeer or whatever are trying to get down the chimney.
It feels so rushed, as if all 3 of the big commercial holidays (I’m talking Halloween, Thanksgiving & Christmas) are all smooshed together. Soon it will just be HalloThanksMas and it will start on July 5th and go through New Years Day.
“Back in the day” there was never a hint of Christmas until after Thanksgiving #amIright? I mean you didn’t even bring up the subject and you were well within your rights to put up a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. And each year I have happy visions of spending long winter days making trays of cookies to pass out to the neighbors. I think I will then go volunteer at the soup kitchen to help those less fortunate or perhaps hand out food at the food bank. I will make my own handmade Christmas cards and put a personal note in each one of them because, you know I have plenty of time to do all of those things right?
Then there’s reality. Where you blink your eyes to get the chlorine water from the pool out of them and it looks like Santa barfed Christmas all over the stores. There’s no time to do any of those wonderful things I imagined myself doing. How many days ‘til Christmas??? I guess I can skip the decorating this year. Do I really need to buy all of those gifts? Surely no one will notice if I don’t send a handmade “Holiday” card or any card at all for that matter? Where did the time go? I refuse to even look at anything remotely merry before Halloween. I mean that alone is pretty scary. So tell me what you think of just having a HalloThanksMas Holiday and just having one big long celebration for a few months? It’s really not a bad idea.