You know, I like Christmas. Really. Family get-togethers, and good food, and decorations, and presents ... it's a wonderful time, especially if you have kids. And, if you're a Christian, it's one of the two holiest days of the year. So it's all good, right?
Here's the problem I have ... Christmas comes earlier and earlier every year.
Oh, not the actual day ITSELF, of course; it's pretty well established by tradition (and, I think, by law in 47 states) that Christmas occurs on December 25. That's probably not the actual date Jesus was born, but it's close enough for government work.
No, the problem I have is with stores putting out their Christmas decorations and displays waaaaay before they should.
When I was a kid, back before the earth's crust cooled and we had to fight for parking spaces at the mall with dinosaurs (who ALWAYS took up at LEAST two spaces), the Christmas season didn't start until after the last bit of meat was picked off the Thanksgiving turkey. We'd all wallow around in a turkey-induced stupor for a week or so after Thanksgiving, with giblet gravy congealing in our hair and smears of cranberry sauce behind our ears, and about the time we were able to stand up again we'd go outside and see that the stores had all put up their Christmas decorations. And that was how God intended it.
Nowadays, though, the Christmas season starts about the same time as the first leaves begin to turn color. You think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not.
Yesterday, I went to one of those big home-improvement stores that seems to sell every known tool, appliance, gadget, widget, piece of lawn care equipment, tree, flower, shrub and lumber size known to man ... except for the one you need, of course. They never have the one thing you need. Anyway, I was there buying a birthday present for my mother. (What? She asked for a bird feeder. I don't question these things; I just do them.)
And when I walked in the store, you'll never guess what I saw. That's right - tools and appliances. But in ADDITION to those things, I also saw a new display going up: Christmas trees.
Fortunately, these weren't LIVE Christmas trees; that really WOULD be stupid. They wouldn't live long enough. ("Hey, Dad, can we get this nice brown stick tree for our living room this year?") They were these weird fake trees that were about ten feet tall and six inches around. They were like giant green pipe cleaners. But they were actual by-golly Christmas trees.
For a minute, I thought I'd somehow lost a month or two, and it was already November or something. But then I saw, right next to the Christmas display, a big display of Halloween yard decorations, like inflatable skulls and weird Grim Reapers that were about ten feet tall and six inches around, like giant black-and-gray pipe cleaners. It's very disturbing when you see an angel on top of a Christmas tree being menaced by a nearby giant inflated skeleton with glowing red eyes.
So I'm against Christmas coming early every year. It's already taken over Thanksgiving, and it's starting to crowd out Halloween. I'll check the Bible again, but I'm fairly certain that when the Three Wise Men came to visit the baby Jesus on that holy night 2,000 years ago, they didn't hold out buckets and say "Trick or treat!"
Newsflash!
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(c) 2013 John Puckett
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