Happy Everything

I love this time of year. The cool weather, beautiful leaves and the anticipation of the upcoming holiday season really make me feel alive. What I don’t love is seeing Christmas decorations lit up like it’s December 24th and yet I’ve only just put away the Halloween decor. It seems we’ve traded campaign ads (thank goodness) for "holiday" ads (because "Christmas" is so non-P.C. but that’s a whole different blog topic) and it’s not even Thanksgiving.

Remember Thanksgiving? The holiday where you spend all day preparing a feast for your closest family and friends and eat entirely too much and swear you will NEVER do that again? The holiday that begins by watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade anxiously awaiting Santa’s arrival and ends searching for the Black Friday sales?

It’s not that I don’t love Christmas, because I absolutely do. I am the friend that will remind you on June 25th that we only have six months until Santa comes! I look forward to dragging out the Christmas Tree on Thanksgiving night, getting up at 4 a.m. to make sure I don’t miss a minute of Black Friday, watching my favorite Christmas movies, driving around for the annual Holloway Tacky Light Tour (coming soon to a city near you), making cookies, wrapping presents and playing Christmas carols until you just can’t stand to hear another one.

Looking forward to doing all of these things brings me just as much joy, if not more, as actually doing them. However, this early rush to Christmas cheats me out of really enjoying the spirit of the season because by the time the season actually starts, I’ve been so inundated by the commercialism of it all that I find myself ready for New Year’s Day when I can pack it all up and start anticipating once again.

It’s really just a matter of time before you start seeing this...