Just waiting for Christmas

Hi neighbors. Thanksgiving is over and now we all just wait for Christmas. Some eager folks had their Christmas music CDs already in the CD player the night before Thanksgiving. They could hardly wait for Black Friday to start playing Christmas songs. Oh, joy.

You can't walk into a department store without hearing the same music piped into your ears and brains all the time you are there. What are they trying to do? Brainwash you into buying more?

I think all the angst about starting Christmas so early is because people just don't know what to do with Thanksgiving. After you eat what do you do? Stores shudder to think you will just sit down and digest.

Grab that credit card and hit the streets! Can't you hear that Christmas music? It's on its way -- it won't be long -- better hurry and get that shopping done! Yeah, right.

I'm sick of Christmas already. In my mind Christmas should be on an equal with Thanksgiving. A new trend is coming though. I can feel it in my support stockings not yet hung on the mantle.

Why wait for Thanksgiving? Why not just start Christmas shopping ads right after Halloween? Heck, skip Halloween and use that candy money to buy more Christmas gifts. Maybe you can wrap Halloween candy in Christmas paper and tell visiting children that's their Christmas gift.

Some families have started exchanging gifts at Thanksgiving because the family can't be together for Christmas. OK, I'm fine with that. We'll call it Thanksmas or Christgiving or Givingmas or Christhanks.

My own family falls in this group because of the distance between the family members, the difficulty of getting time off work, travel weather worries, etc.

I actually prefer having Christmas at Thanksgiving. It might be the only way Thanksgiving survives as a holiday. If it wasn't for Thanksgiving Day being the starting gate for the Black Friday Demolition Derby, Thanksgiving would have been done away with years ago. After all, no one buys anything for Thanksgiving -- just food.

And we all know holidays are all about shopping these days -- right?

If Christmas was celebrated in November we wouldn't resent 30 days of Christmas music from Thanksgiving till Dec. 25. When winter actually hits, we won't have to worry about snow days (kids worry there will be none, parents worry there will be some.)

The only winter holiday that shoppers would worry about then would be New Years Day and that doesn't really help the department stores much. Again, it's a holiday about drinks and food, not so much credit card use.

Maybe we should just have all legal holidays scheduled to run consecutively for two weeks in the summer. Kids would already be off school, no one would have to use too much vacation time, all businesses would shut down for two weeks and everyone could go on vacation!

Now doesn't that sound like a plan?

But, I might prefer to stay home two weeks in mid-winter. I don't like ice or snow. I had a dog once who stepped out onto an ice packed porch and slid from the door, across the porch, and onto the frozen lawn without knowing what hit him. Once I saw he was not hurt, merely dumb founded, my concern turned into gratitude and I was just glad he went first and made me realize the porch was a solid sheet of ice.

Old dogs on ice aren't all that funny; but old women on ice are not at all funny.

Until the next time folks, remember, just because it is December does not mean we have to watch Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for the millionth time. If you also prefer to hear Christmas music from carolers or a church choir, not pumped non-stop from loud speakers, stay home and forget Christmas shopping. Do what Flossie recommends: send everyone a card and enclose some left-over turkey or the ever popular fruit cake.