Holidays Are Right Around the Corner

fallDid that headline make you cringe, or did your blood start pumping faster in anticipation of joyful tidings, chestnuts roasting and holiday parties? If it was the second of those options, why are we friends? No, seriously. I don’t understand.

I have started getting holiday tips in my inbox. I realize that PR cycles run in advance of the actual calendar, but I don’t want to think about planning for Christmas, and I certainly don’t want to have to start worrying about New Year’s Eve.  I barely like planning for them in December, why do you think I want to hear about them when we are barely into October?

When I saw Halloween stuff at the beginning of September, I tried to be reasonable in my assessments. Labor Day isn’t a big buying holiday, so concentrating on Halloween candy was an interesting ploy—mostly because everyone knows that if you convince someone to buy candy in September, they’ll be back at least four more times before October 31st because they’ve eaten everything before the big night. I’m not saying that I’ve done that (I’ve totally done that).

I draw the line at Christmas stuff in October. You’ve got two perfectly good, commercially-exploitable events prior to December. Let’s take our time and fully embrace the possibilities of Halloween and Thanksgiving first – things like gratitude, family… the onset of the sugar coma induced by all that candy corn.  Think of all the people on Pinterest who have just posted up their scary villages and professionally designed pumpkins. Think of what you’ll miss if they have to skip over handcrafted Thanksgiving dinner settings and 1001 recipes for the perfect family dinner? I won’t stand for that kind of deprivation.

And if you can’t think of them, think of me. I have way too much to do to have to deal with an event that is months away.  But every time you send me emails with “Are you ready for the holidays?” I start to panic. I blurt out “OMG, I’m not!” and then I race around the apartment wondering how I could be so far behind while I pull sweaters from storage. And it doesn’t matter that it is currently 90 degrees here. I will do it because I feel guilty about how unprepared I am for an event you have convinced me is right around the corner.  So, please, stop me from having to explain why the flannel sheets are on the bed and why White Christmas is flowing from my speakers. Please.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *