Daelyn's a little confused about the timing of Christmas. And no wonder. The Salvation Army is already out at every store with their bowls and bells. The Seasonal aisle at Kroger has both Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations, plates and napkins out. When did this start happening before Thanksgiving?
I'm a diehard. I'm determined to celebrate each season separately. I will not put up Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving. I will not donate to the Salvation Army until after Thanksgiving.
When you start this early, the season is impossibly long. I kind of understand retailers starting early - the earlier they get out Christmas stuff, the more money they make. It's simple economics. But it seems ludicrous to me that the Christmas season is now 6 - 8 weeks long.
And then there's dealing with the excitement of a child. How do you explain to Daelyn that, even though the Christmas commercials with Santa buying jewelry for Mrs. Clause and a string of about 80 reindeer fly across the top of the screen to advertise cell phones began airing weeks ago, Christmas IS NOT imminent. Every night, he asks if Christmas is the next day. It must be incredibly difficult for him to surpress his anticipation as he waits weeks and weeks for the appointed day.
Last night, he was asking me, yet again, when it would be Christmas. "First, son," I tried to explain, "we have Thanksgiving."
He looked at me skeptically. "Okay," he responded, "when is Thanksgiving?"
"This week. It will be this Thursday. Brother and Sissy will get out of school half day on Wednesday, Thanksgiving is on Thursday, and then they have Friday off."
He smiled and I caught a glimpse of excitement returning to his eyes. "Mommy," he asked, "can we go to Thanksgiving?"
I'm not quite sure what he thinks we're "going" to. I hope it's not another disappointment for him. Just chock it up to "Holiday Confusion".
3 comments:
I'm with you on this post. Here in Canada all the holiday seasons seem to blend into one another which makes for a sense of never having any breaks. I think in the kids it produces a loss of anticipation, and the ability to reminisce. For the adults a sense of time speeding past, as the holidays mark off the year in one long never ending holiday.
The only way to avoid the commercialism of every holiday is to avoid the stores. But, that's not always possible.
I guarantee that no sooner will the Christmas stuff be taken down than Valentines day stuff will already be in the windows. Christmas stuff was already in Cosco this year mixed in with Halloween and Back to School. No kidding!
P.S. Please think of us on your Thanksgiving Day? That's moving day for our family and we just received news last night that the owners of our new house won't be moved out until Thursday noon, leaving us only the afternoon to get out of our house. Our buyers take possession on Friday at noon.
We're feeling a little panicked, and had to reschedule the movers. Pray everything will quickly fall into place. We don't have any room for error, or taking our time.
a radio station here in birmingham has already started playing Christmas music nonstop since this past saturday.
I liked it when everything started coming out and songs started being played the day after Thanksgiving.
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