Over the weekend I was thinking a lot about "the Holidays" in general. I realized that, speaking for myself, since Halloween has become such a Big Deal, I really now have the sense that "the Holiday Season," in the U.S. anyway, doesn't start at Thanksgiving. No, it now starts at Halloween.
![Undecided :-\](http://bettermost.net/forum/Smileys/cowboy/undecided.gif)
I was also remembering how I used to be really annoyed by Christmas stuff before Thanksgiving. I still think it's a bit much for stores to have Christmas stuff displayed before Halloween
![Roll Eyes ::)](http://bettermost.net/forum/Smileys/cowboy/rolleyes.gif)
but I've pretty much reconciled myself to starting to prepare for Christmas when Halloween is over. Last year I "gave in" and gave up standing on principle and refusing to start my Christmas preparations until after Thanksgiving. I was a bit chagrined to discover, when I did this last year, that my December was a whole lot less stressful when I stopped trying to cram too much into the few weeks--really weekends--between Thanksgiving Day and December 24. The answer for me is not to cut back on what I do each Christmas Season, but rather to start it earlier.
And so, since I spent this past Saturday cleaning my entire condo
![Tongue :P](http://bettermost.net/forum/Smileys/cowboy/tongue.gif)
the job for next Saturday will be to take down my current model train layout and prepare for the Christmas layout. And after work today I am going to K-Mart to see if they have Christmas trees available yet (I'll be surprised if they don't) because I need a new Christmas tree for this year.