The moment I walked into Target on Halloween night, I knew something was wrong: Christmas was here, but it was only October! Alongside the discounted Halloween merchandise, the beginnings of Christmas decorations had appeared. Next to the outdoor Santa and reindeer, artificial Christmas trees and the accompanying glass balls and lights filled the shelves. Who decided that a holiday should be planned for two months and three holidays in advance?
Halloween, Veteran’s Day, and Thanksgiving finish off the month of October and sufficiently fill November. While I understand American flags and even turkey cutouts with rainbow feathers filling the aisles next to the princess and werewolf costumes, Frosty and Rudolph should be nowhere near them.
The madness of Christmas coming months early has spread: not only are shoppers buying decorations early in an effort to save money and make preparations, but they are putting them up. Christmas trees are already going up in living rooms across the country; stockings have already been hung across fireplaces.
Just yesterday afternoon, I walked downstairs for an afternoon snack and discovered my mother pulling the boxes labeled “Lights” and “Wreaths” off the highest shelves of my garage. To my dismay, the radio was tuned to 101.5, a station notorious for playing holiday music, and blasting the ever-so-popular “It’s Beginning to Look A Lot like Christmas.”
Down the street from my house, just off of Carpenter Pond Road, one house has already filled their yard with countless candy canes, Santa’s, snowmen, reindeer, sleds, etc. By five o’clock each evening, cars slow to stare at the neon-red and green spectacle.
Holiday decorations and Christmas music are fine, as long as they happen anytime AFTER Thanksgiving, not before. Call me the Grinch, but I believe the twinkling lights and the winter scent of Christmas trees should wait until the turkey leftovers are safely in the refrigerator and the smell of pumpkin pie has ceased to drift from the kitchen.
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