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.
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
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
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.
