Don’t rush Christmas season

It is a magical transformation. One day our stores are dressed in Remembrance. The next day stores metamorphoses to Christmas.
Garlands and lights surround windows. Christmas banners hang from ceilings directing shoppers to Christmas specials. Christmas music plays in the background.
Suddenly Christmas bazaars and teas are flourishing throughout the community.
At the newspaper, we began seeing bookings for Christmas flyers early in September. Retailers had begun planning for Christmas 2014 shortly after the Christmas selling season had ended in 2013.
The calendar pages are constantly flipping forward.
It used to be a period of change during the last week of November.
This year, outdoor lighting and blow up snowmen, and Santas appeared in some stores the week before Halloween had happened.
In my neighborhood, on the Saturday following Halloween, several homes withdrew their pumpkin blowups replacing them with snowmen.
I’ll admit that my outdoor lights were strung the second weekend in November. However, they will not go “live” until the last weekend in November.
I have become a little bit like Scrooge, begrudging an inflated electrical bill for December.
I really enjoy my lights outdoors and throughout the neighborhoods of our community. The lights diminish the harshness of the long dark nights that begin at the end of November and last through to the end of January.
Yet I don’t want to rush the Christmas season. I feel the weekend of the Santa Claus parade is the appropriate time to light up my yard.
Christmas promotion for me seems to be starting too early.
It was not as open as it is today. Looking back, Christmas did begin almost four months prior to Christmas.
We didn’t see it on television, or newspapers or hear it on radio as we do today.
I remember the excitement my sons experienced with the arrival of the Sears Christmas catalogue in September.
By the first week in December when we allowed them to write a letter to Santa, the pages had become well worn. Final decisions had to be made.
Over three months, their wishes for Christmas gifts changed almost daily.
Santa will be making frequent appearances across the district in the next several weeks appearing simultaneously at different venues.
Moms and dads will line up with their youngsters for pictures with Santa building the hype to Christmas morning. Schools will begin rehearsals for concerts for moms, dads, and grandparents to enjoy with pride as they perform in front of their eyes.
The Christmas season has arrived and there are only five weeks to go before we transform again to wish in 2015. How time flies by.