Bring It On!

I am interested to know your opinions on an age-old dilemma: How soon is too soon to begin celebrating the Christmas season? It's a quandary I've examined many times because, you see, I absolutely love Christmas. I love everything about it. I love the music, the shopping, the crowds. I love the decorations, the children's programs, the food. I love the caroling, the greeting cards, the parties, the surprises. I love to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I even love the traffic jams at the mall. I love being part of all of it. I seriously can't think of a single thing about Christmas that I don't like. Still, as much as I love it, I can't celebrate it twelve months out of the year, so the question remains: How soon is too soon to start?

I used to force myself to wait until Thanksgiving to begin playing Christmas music. About two years ago, I decided that was dumb. Eli begins learning new Christmas songs on the piano at the start of November, so it's already playing in my house. Why shouldn't I also listen to my holiday CDs? No reason.

My friend and I were in the mall this past Friday night, and already there were decorations and lights, along with Christmas carols playing in the background. Did that bother me? Absolutely not! I loved it. Is it a marketing technique designed to get people to spend money? Of course. Do I care? No! I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it.

So what about decorations at home? Hmmm. When we lived in Washington, our tradition was to go to this lovely Christmas tree farm the day after Thanksgiving and cut down our tree. This place had every variety of tree with dozens of shapes and sizes from which to choose. They served hot chocolate or cider and cookies, and sometimes, even Santa was there! It was fabulous. Then we moved to Montana, where apparently, they don't grow Christmas trees. Sad. The only option if you want a real tree is to buy an already-cut one from a stand. Well, I've heard you can drive into the mountains and cut down a tree, but I've also heard that since these trees aren't grown to be Christmas trees, they don't really look very good. I can't say for sure if that's true because we haven't tried it.

Our first year here, we bought a pre-cut tree from a stand the day after Thanksgiving. We decorated it as usual with our many, many decorations. It was lovely. For about two weeks. Then it started to turn brown. Then it completely turned brown. Then the brown pine needles fell all over the floor. Blah! We had to take off all the decorations, remove the tree, and vacuum up millions of needles. And then we had to start over. This was not fun. That was the year I caved and bought an artificial tree. I still love my Christmas tree because of the many ornaments to represent the years of our lives and our children's lives. Eli carefully places each of the five "Baby's First Christmas" ornaments in a vertical pattern down the center of the front of the tree. Other significant ornaments are also placed in strategic locations. Every year, we include various ornaments the kids created in school, including a lovely glittered pine cone and yellow ceramic bell Luke made in kindergarten. Every year, Shulamith complains about how she made those exact ornaments the following year, but I just threw them away and saved Luke's. And every year I tell her it's because I like Luke better than her. Ahh the traditions, the memories, the love.

Still, I miss having a real tree. I do.

Back to the question of how soon is too soon, I've decided that once Halloween is over, anything goes. No, I won't get out decorations until the day after Thanksgiving, and I won't allow Thanksgiving itself to be dwarfed in the mad Christmas rush because I truly love Thanksgiving too. But I will get my music out, maybe even today. And I will enjoy the mall every chance I get, where the lights twinkle and the carols play and the joy abounds.

As I said at the start of this post, I am interested to know your opinions on this subject. As for me, I have three words to define the start of the most wonderful season of the year:

Bring it on!