toooooo early

My friend Laurie is nuts about Christmas, and sure enough, she had Stu out there this weekend hanging the lights and setting up the inflatable whatsit in the front yard.

My family had a tradition of setting up a small-ish artificial tree either the night of Thanksgiving (after post-meal naps) or the day after, to kick off the Christmas season. Aside from growing up with that tradition, I simply don't want to steal any thunder from Thanksgiving, which is one of my favorite holidays. It pained me to see Christmas crap in the seasonal section at Target next to the Halloween stuff when I was shopping for pumpkin carving tools.

As I said in 2005:

In many ways, I prefer Thanksgiving to Christmas. Thanksgiving doesn't have nearly the hype that December 25th holiday brings. One often finds more hospitable weather -- and more hospitable attitudes of the general public -- on the fourth Thursday of November. The day comes without gobs of money spent on gifts no one really needs; instead, the day is unabashedly devoted to food we don't need.

[...]

Thanksgiving also ushers in the season of Christmas, and despite the best efforts of the retail industry, it provides a barrier to keep us from diving into The Holiday Season™ too quickly. Christmas hypes up the gift exchange with lights and trees and carols and parties and alleged goodwill toward all, only to have it all come crashing down within a few hours' time on December 25th. Thanksgiving isn't nearly so pretentious, and thus isn't such a letdown when it's over.

This will be a different shopping season for me. Now that I'm living on my own, I have significantly less disposable income to spend on such things. And speaking of spending money on Christmas, I'd like to get an artificial tree for my apartment, but I won't even have room for it if I don't finish unpacking -- or at the very least, resign to stacking boxes in a semi-out-of-the-way place, which is a gateway drug to clutter and apathy. I know; I grew up in such a house. I really don't want to go down that path.

(Apparently, I'd rather live in denial and continue walking around the boxes in the mistaken belief that if they're in my way, I'll eventually be annoyed enough to unpack them. As if that weren't a gateway drug to apathy. Argh! It's starting already!)

Edited to add: I'm not Scroogish about Christmas, though. I was reminded of something else that was a de facto tradition in the Bird household. Since my parents were both teachers, certain aspects of our lives were aligned to the school year. As I said, we'd put up the artificial tree on Thanksgiving night, but we didn't assemble a live tree in the living room until a few days or a week before Christmas.

For one, that ensured it was still fresh and piney-smelling for the 25th. For another, it meant we got to enjoy it through New Year's and the end of winter break. So not only did Thanksgiving get its due in November, we got to enjoy Christmas for a few weeks in January as well.

I know people who chuck the tree out on the curb on the 26th; I just can't imagine doing that. Such an act is not even in my vocabulary. (Moot in my case since live Christmas trees aren't allowed in my apartment.)