Heart and Mind

Rushing the Christmas Season and My Christmas Lights

Each year, in reference to retail sales, people like to say, "Oh, they're really rushing the Christmas season this year."

That statement is completely ridiculous.

Oh, "they" rush it, alright (sic), by most people's standards, but "they" rush the Christmas season every year. That's the fact. I'm not saying it's a daft statement because the "rushing" part is untrue. I'm saying the "this year" part is the part that is wrong.

Of course, when you get down to semantics, they do rush it "this year," but by saying "this year," it kind of implies that "this year" is different than "other years" in recent times. It is not.

Often when someone points this out, though, the person who made the initial "rushing" comment will counter with something like, "Yeah, but this year they're really rushing it. Over at the mall, they had the Christmas trees up in, like, October."

Sorry...wrong, There are always Christmas trees and decorations up at the mall in October. That much I know. According to my wife, who apparently pays even more attention to this stuff than I do, she says you can even see them in "late September."

"It's always late September," she says in definitive reference to the topic.

So, I hope we can agree that retail places always rush the season, by most anyone's standards.

But when, then, does the Christmas season start? I have a definitive rule that I live by...

In my mind, my house, my world, the Christmas season starts once the meal is done on Thanksgiving day. There's got to be a starting point and, for me, that's when it is.

I am all for anything and everything Christmas related after the Thanksgiving meal. In fact, half the appeal of Thanksgiving—which would be tremendously overrated if it happened at a different time of year and didn't have this element—is that it signifies the start of the "holiday season." That's the beginning.

if you want to sit around the piano and sing Christmas carols with the family after dinner, that's just grand. But prior to that, it's just weird to me.

I love Christmas music, but it's got to be after Thanksgiving dinner. And I always stick to that. On that "running on half speed" work day before Thanksgiving, one of my co-workers, knowing my dislike for holiday music "too early," felt I had staved him off long enough and he issued the warning, "Steve, I'm playing Christmas music today."

"No!" I protested, stating without even the subtlest hint that I was joking. "I'll go home [if you do]!"

Now, I was joking, or bluffing, at the very least. I'm not that much of a pill that I'd actually do that, but I was hoping that he'd take my counter threat seriously.

"You'll have to wait another day or so," I said. "And then you can play it all month long non-stop with no complaint from me."

Christmas is just splendid, when timely.

Now, what's funny is that while I have this hard, fast rule I live by, once the season starts by my definition, it's like a light switch. Usually on the weekend following Thanksgiving, starting with "Black Friday," we put up the lights and the tree, and we start watching Christmas programming in the household. The whole Christmas season is such an ordeal in our society, and it's really only a month, so I don't get it when people wait until late in December to put up fake trees. It's too much work to decorate your house and stuff to only have it up for a week or two. I want my lights up right after Thanksgiving.

So, it's pretty common that I put them up on the Friday or Saturday, if time permits. This year, I actually put them up on Thanksgiving (after the meal, of course), marking the earliest I ever put them up. It was purely circumstance that caused this. To me, it's a chore that I have to fit in, and all the planets lined up. The kids were occupied, and my niece was bored and requesting I play with her outside, and I saw an opportunity.

"You want to help me put up the Christmas lights?" I asked. I don't think it's the thing she most wanted to do, but it was a better alternative than staying in the house, so she agreed.

I had them up before we left to go to my aunt's house for Thanksgiving dessert with the extra-large "extended" version of the family.

While I was putting them up, my father made two irksome comments.

One, as I was on the ladder hanging them from the gutter, he asked if I checked the bulbs first. (My mother, too, asked me this later.) This was annoying because of course I checked them first. Parents, despite being proud of their adult children, also seem to not be able to refrain from talking to them like they're morons who need coaching with certain basic, common sense things. I've been a home owner for just about a decade and I've been putting up lights every year. I know what I'm doing and how the lighting game works around my house.

The other thing he said that was annoying was a jab in the form of this snarky comment: "Talk about rushing the season."

First of all, I'm of the opinion that I was not rushing the season. Would it have been rushing it if I did it the next day? The day when everyone and his mother floods the stores in a state of Christmas frenzy?

Regardless, the fact of the matter is that this was simply an issue of timing. I'm a busy guy. Though I like having some decorations around the house to make things a little festive, I am not one of these people who finds immense enjoyment in the act of doing the decorating. That ended when I was about twelve. It's just a chore that needs to get done, and I saw an opportunity and took advantage of it. And it was within my own range of "acceptability."

But when you consider some of the things mentioned in this post—the fact that the Christmas season is only a month long at best and the fact that it's a chore for me to decorate—it's no surprise that the magnitude of my decorations is low key. It's kind of done to a "just doing my part" degree, which means, "Hey, I'm adding my little bit of color and festiveness to brighten the neighborhood and show my support for the season, but I'm not going crazy here." I have all the respect in the world for people who opt to get extravagant or, in rare cases, downright crazy with creating a veritable holiday winter wonderland on their front lawns, but I don't feel the need to be among them.

I'm not lazy, by any stretch. I (arguably) wasted zillions of hours of my life gutting every room in my house and rebuilding it from the studs up, but at least thats hard labor put towards changes that are permanent in nature. Christmas lights can only be up for about a month and still be in season. So I enjoy my less is more approach.

posted by Steve @ 9:57 PM