For me, the holidays are always a fun time of year– probably because when I was growing up, my mother would always bring out all the decorations pertinent to that holiday. Most of these trappings were homemade, so they had that special quality to it. For example, I still fondly remember the yellow moon with a witch’s outline silhouetted against it, both created from construction paper, taped to the window and visible from outside.

Each holiday belonged to its own particular season, and one never began before another. In the Fall, Halloween decorations were never up before the second week of October, and Thanksgiving decorations always went up around the first or second week of November. Christmas decorations didn’t usually appear until December 1, or shortly thereafter.

As an adult, I’ve continued these traditions– Valentine’s Day decorations don’t go up until February 1 at the earliest, and shamrocks never made an appearance prior to March the 1 on the dot. Right now, our Thanksgiving decorations grace the dining table, the coffee table, and the hall table. But our Christmas decorations won’t go up until we return from stuffing our faces (although Thanksgiving has its origins in New England, and was first celebrated on a national scale at a time when the nation was far more divided than it is today (1863), to me it’s the one holiday whose sole purpose seems to be to eat as much as you possibly can without bursting).

The same goes for shopping– while I might “cheat” here and there (if I see something that I KNOW is the perfect gift, and it happens to be July, I buy it then– you never know– you might not see it again), I don’t go shopping until *after* Thanksgiving. That doesn’t mean I go out on Black Friday at 7 a.m. to the nearest Big Box store, along with 800 other people, and risk being trampled to death. It *does* mean that maybe on the Saturday or Sunday after Thanksgiving, I’ll casually stroll the local shopping district, or pay a visit to the nearest mall, and start browsing.

Retailers, naturally, differ from me (and I suspect, from most of us); for them, the holidays begin about 2-3 months before their actual calendar date. I don’t know if it’s me, or what, but this year, it seemed to begin earlier than ever. During the last week of August, I actually saw one store that had Santa stuff on display. Ugh. Spare me.

Halloween candy was already on the shelves at the chain drugstore down the street on the day after Labor Day, despite the fact that the actual holiday was nearly two months away. Stale treats, anyone? For the record, the world winner of the Iron Stomach contest has to be the individual who buys any candy from a chain drugstore the day after the holiday is over with…

What seems to be missing these days,  though, are any decorations related to the harvest season and Thanksgiving in general. When I was a child, stores and businesses actually put up displays of scarecrows, pumpkins, corn, Pilgrims, and other icons of November. We seem to have just entirely skipped one whole month, jumping from Halloween to Christmas overnight. I suspect part of it is the increasingly urban nature of our nation. Where people actually used to live near farms and more rural environs, now everyone either lives in a megalopolis or within the urban boundaries of a metropolis (witness West Virginia as a prime example; 20 years ago,  West Virginia was “West Virginia”; now it’s considered part of the “Greater Washington D.C.-Baltimore area.”).

While I can’t do anything about how businesses and corporations act these days, for me, Thanksgiving and Fall are firmly entrenched in my mind, at least until after Thanksgiving Day itself. Call it being old-fashioned, or subversive, or whatever, but to me, tradition is important.

Now that Thanksgiving is past, and Christmas is a month away, NOW Christmastime can begin!