"Merry Hallogivmas......."

Looks like the holiday season is here already, if not much earlier than ever. In fact, we really don't seem to have Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas anymore. Sometime in mid-September, the retail stores pull the summer items off the shelves and set up the Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas goodies all at once. It is not uncommon to find plastic jack-o-lanterns and Santa hats in the same aisle thes days. Everything gets lumped together into one big holiday season, which I have decided to call "Hallogivmas!"

While the retail trend to bring out the winter holiday items sooner and sooner each year seems quite common now (and why not, this is retail's biggest sales season, so why not bring it out early) you really didn't hear holiday / Christmas music until the day after Thanksgiving. That's always been the official start date of those Lite FM 24 hour holiday music programs and when the Christmas decorations and music fill the malls during "Black Friday."

Not this year. Today, November 8th the campus Starbucks was playing Christmas music by Dean Martin, and selling Gingerbread Syrups and Peppermint Bark along with Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Pumpkin muffins. My wife and I had dinner last night at a well known Italian chain playing non-stop Christmas music until somebody actually complained (only then did we here the cliched Italian music we came for..). Did I mention it was also well above 70 degrees outside still? After dinner, we tuned in for The Simpson's annual Halloween Special which was peppered with Christmas shopping ads throughout the half hour.

What about Thanksgiving? The greatest eating holiday of them all? How did we jump from All Hallow's Eve to Christmas Eve before the end of the first week of November? What about waiting for Santa at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade before launching Christmas? Have our individual post-summer holidays become nothing more than a commercial retail cacophony?

For me, these are my three favorite holidays, and while the December holiday season is my favorite, I prefer to enjoy all three seasons individually. I have no problem breaking out the holiday music after Thanksgiving, but right after Halloween is just crazy. Can't we return to enjoying the individual holidays? Can't we savour Fall, a season of color and change? Can't we wait a bit longer between putting away our swin suits and hanging stockings by the chimney with care? Otherwise, we might as well start wishing everyone a "Merry Hallogivmas."

Paul......