Stop Rushing Me!

Enough America.  Enough of your propaganda.  Enough of your ads, your music in the background, your red cups of coffee extolling a season that is not yet here.  Enough.

It is early November.  The weather finally feels like fall.  Halloween is past, but so recently that kids still have their trick-or-treat candy left.  There are still three and a half weeks until Thanksgiving and, believe it or not, 7.5 weeks until Christmas.  You would never know this based on the ads on TV, the circulars in the paper and the bombardment of Christmas in every store.  I don't want to see stores bedecked in red and green. My eyes are still happy with autumnal reds, oranges and yellows.  I know Thanksgiving isn't a big money maker, but do we have to go right from Halloween to Christmas?  It is like reading the first three chapters of a book, skipping the middle and then diving into the final chapter.  Total rip-off.

I was surprised to receive the big toy book from Target before Halloween.  That got tossed without even paging through it because IT IS TOO SOON to start thinking about Christmas.  And yes, I tossed it complete with coupons and $5 gift card inside because you have to use them before Thanksgiving.  I was saddened to see that Starbucks broke out their holiday red cups on November 1st.  Too soon Starbucks, too soon.  Red cups December 1st?  Yes, perfect.  Let's all dream of peppermint mochas, playing Santa and good will towards men.  Red cups on November 1st?  Pressure.  It is not festive and merry when you force it too soon.  We will all be sick of the red before St. Nicholas Day.  (December 6th for those of you who did not grow up in the North).

Bah.  Humbug.

I am not going to buy into the hype.  I am going to eat my kids' candy and I am not going to skip over the next three weeks of thinking about Thanksgiving.  I am going to look forward to a long, long weekend filled with amazing food and time spent together as a family.  We will eat with abandon and wear our comfy pants all day long.  No nice clothes and good manners (except for Bill), just time together, movies, hanging out and relaxing.  Time to reflect, time to give thanks, time to just stop grinding it out each day and time to just breathe.  One year, thanks to my worldly cousin, we ended up having a guest here from another country who had never had Thanksgiving dinner before.  My kids got to explain the history of Thanksgiving (minus the genocide that followed) and he got to eat a Bill McMahon turkey dinner.  It was a beautiful, beautiful, rewarding, soul-enriching day.  Why are we as a nation trying to fast forward through all this?

Last year I got caught up in the hype.  I felt that I had to buy this at this store or this over here or this right now, but financially I couldn't jump fully into my seasonal crazy and that made me stressed.  I was sure Christmas would be ruined and I wouldn't get what we needed.  But let me tell you, Bill and I took a day the week before Christmas and got everything we needed, and cheap!  Forget Black Friday!  Try the mall the week before Christmas - they are giving things away!  The best part was that we took an entire day and we spent it together.  We had coffee and talked, we went to the mall and survived, we thought about our kids and how big they had gotten.  We wondered if William would still shake when he opened his presents.  (He did, but not as much as we hoped.)  It was a calm, wonderful day in the middle of a busy, harried week and I can't wait to do it again.

So please don't let them fool you.  Don't let them take away the actual beauty of Thanksgiving by treating it like it doesn't matter.  It does matter!  Don't ruin the magic of Christmas by buying into it too soon.  Christmas is magical because it only takes place for a short while, not because it is readily available November 1st.  There will be plenty of stuff available in December and leftover stuff haunting the shelves still in January.  Close your eyes to the commercials and skip over the ads in the paper.  Look at the weather and the calendar to decide which holiday is really next.  

I wish I could say I would boycott Starbucks and their red cups for the next month, but that would be silly.  I think I will bring a reusable cup when I go as to not be angered and which I should do anyway.  December 1st, however,  I will take their red cup and I will smile and I will feel the magic of a true Christmas season beginning to sparkle.