365 Project – Day 317 – Let’s Talk Turkey

Okay, I’ll admit it. I tend to get a little grumpy this time of year. No, I don’t have Seasonal Affective Disorder. And no, I’m not a Scrooge. Christmas may not be my favorite holiday, but love it for what it is–a time to spend with family and a time to celebrate the story of hope that is Christ’s birth.

My problem with Christmas, though, is what it has become. Every year, the gifts seem to get a little bigger, a little more expensive. Every year, the stores begin to decorate a little earlier. Every year, the pressure gets a little greater to make Christmas into a gigantic production complete with festive music and pretty dancing girls. Every year, Christmas becomes a little less of a holiday of hope and giving and a little more of a commercialized mess of avarice and greed.

I think what makes me the maddest though, is that Thanksgiving gets completely lost in the pre-Christmas festivities. This year, I walked into a store and saw them starting to put up Christmas decorations on October 28.

OCTOBER 28!!!

We hadn’t even made it through Halloween yet, and Christmas is already being stuffed down our throats! Really? REALLY???

As Christmas continues to plot its eventual hostile takeover of both Thanksgiving and Halloween, I find myself clinging to my two favorite holidays like a dazed shipwrecked survivor clings to a life raft. And I go out of my way to celebrate and enjoy the two while postponing my own Christmas preparations as long as possible.

I will not max out my credit cards to go overboard on gifts. I will not waste a day that I could be spending with my loved ones to go out and shop with a bunch of caffeine-crazed maniacs on Black Friday. And I certainly will not start digging out my Christmas decorations or music or movies until after I have sufficiently gorged myself on turkey and stuffing and collapsed into a three-day food coma watching football on the couch.

Time goes by too fast the way it is, and I for one am not going to help it pass even faster by hurrying through one holiday just to get to another. I’ll be here, enjoying today, while you rush, rush, rush to get to tomorrow. And when you finally decide you’ve had enough of the craziness, you know where to find me.