Jessica Giannone
The lights are up, the stockings are hung, the trees are set and the turkey is cooking. Wait a minute, the turkey? Well, maybe this isn’t so strange for Christmas, but I am actually talking about Thanksgiving. This year, it seems as though the Christmas spirit has been promoted since the day after Halloween.
Instead of focusing on the last of the fall festivities, people have been overwhelmed by trying to plan their days around Christmas tasks. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with getting things done ahead of time, but I think the Christmas lights I noticed on Nov. 1 were a little extreme. I just wanted to say, “Slow down there, before you get too excited about Christmas, at least get through Thanksgiving.”
Rather than enjoying that quality time with family at Thanksgiving dinner, I find that more and more people have been fixated on Black Friday. People have become consumed with the chaotic errands of Christmas throughout the whole month of November. I’m pretty sure the entire two months isn’t necessary to prepare, but if your life is that busy, God bless you!
Now, don’t get me wrong. Christmas is my favorite time of year and I love expressing the “holiday spirit,” I just hope we’re not all forgetting what really matters. We don’t want to become too preoccupied with the hustle and bustle of it all to the point where we can’t even sit down and relax as the last days of fall pass us by.
I guess it’s inevitable that Christmas time begins the day after you clear your plate of stuffing and cranberry sauce, but we shouldn’t forget that Christmas too will pass, and then it’s on to the next thing. We have to enjoy every day we have, and not ruin it with “preoccupancy” of the future.
Maybe it’s not as dramatic as I’m making it seem–some people just get really excited for December. However, call me crazy, but I don’t think Christmas, Thanksgiving and even Halloween (as odd as that sounds) were meant to be mixed into one period of celebration.
The week before Thanksgiving, you can’t even go food shopping without running into something that looks like it popped out of a Charles Dickens novel. It’s kind of pushing it when television becomes swarmed with Christmas ads before Oct. 10. Even Christmas shopping revolves around deals, obligations and deadlines, rather than pure thoughtfulness.
The point I’m trying to make here is that people should just relax and enjoy holiday time with family before worrying about the next event. Of course, it’s not a big deal, but before you know it, there won’t even be as much of a concern for anything else besides Christmas. The movies that will eventually come out will end up being titled, “A Month Without Santa,” and “I’ll be Home for Halloween.”
If things keep going the way they are, and people keep decorating for Christmas before the first day of November arrives, maybe next year Santa will plop down on a pumpkin as he dives through the chimney.
