Sunday, September 18, 2016

Are The Holidays Getting Confused?

As we all know, Christmas is December 25th. But it seems to arrive earlier each year. Here we are…the middle of September. The official start of autumn (here in the northern hemisphere) is Thursday, September 22, 2016. We've barely cleared the summer season. Halloween is still over a month away and Thanksgiving is two months away. But none of that seems to make any difference.

As far as some retailers are concerned, Christmas is rapidly approaching. In fact, it's almost here. Yep…that's right. I've already seen Christmas decorations, Christmas cards, Christmas wrapping paper and other things Christmas in the stores next to the displays of Halloween candy and masks.

It's a little disconcerting. Winter weather is definitely not here. There's nothing outside that even pretends to resemble the pictures on Christmas cards showing the snow-laden pine and fir trees, pristine snow covering the landscape (before it turns to dirty slush), and a perfect snowman out there in the wilderness complete with top hat and scarf around his neck rather than the lopsided snowman in someone's front yard. And there's the charming country cottage with the smoke curling from the chimney and an old-fashioned sleigh being pulled by a horse.

How can you even think of chestnuts roasting on an open fire and Jack Frost nipping at your nose when the temperature is in the mid 80s? I do realize that there are lots of places where nice warm weather is common at Christmas time. Hawaii and southern Florida come to mind. And, of course, in the southern hemisphere Christmas arrives in the middle of summer. But even with the places in the U.S. that experience warm weather year round, wouldn't it be nice to get Halloween and Thanksgiving out of the way before concentrating on Christmas?

I, personally, would rather finish with one holiday before embarking on the next one. Maybe that has to do with my childhood. My birthday is in mid December and my parents always made sure that it was clearly separated from Christmas. The tree and decorations did not go up until after my birthday.

2 comments:

Sandra Dailey said...

I'm with you. It's hard to get into the holiday spirit when they overlap like this.

Samantha Gentry said...

Sandra: The last 2 days here have been in the mid-high 90s...definitely not Christmas (or even Thanksgiving) weather. Hard to think about crisp cold air other than wishing some of it would come my way.

Thanks for your comment.