Holidays Need to Slow Down

When I was a child many years ago you got to be a kid for as long as you liked. I was in no hurry to grow up and be big. I wanted to savor each moment of each second of each day. We got up at the crack of dawn, ran out the front door and didn’t come in till mommy or daddy called us for supper. We loved being kids and more important we loved preparing for each holiday. Holidays were a season, an adventure, they had anticipation and excitement and each one owned its own time period.

Those days are long gone.  How sad.

Yesterday I went into Target and one isle has Halloween stuff, the next isle had Thanksgiving stuff and the next 6 isles has Christmas stuff. It made me so angry as every year it seems Christmas moves closer and closer to the 4th of July.

Kids in the store were already begging mommy for this toy or that toy. They could have cared less about the scary goblins and ghosts on isle 7 when Santa and lights and wrapping paper was all over isle 11 through 17.

When I was a kid the month of October belonged to Halloween. You would start thinking up a great costume on October 1st and if your mom was going to make it she typically took your measurements by the first weekend of that month. Once the costume was off and the candy separated into empty shoe boxes (all the same items in one section) you woke up to November 1st and November meant turkey and falling leaves. Mommy would make her menu and stick the Thanksgiving menu on the fridge as a reminder that Tom the turkey would be here soon. November belonged to Thanksgiving. It was not until the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade that Christmas was even mentioned. Santa would arrive at the parade and downtown Philly would be decorated for the holiday. Shoppers would get up early on black Friday to venture out for the best sales and with the leftover turkey on that Friday afternoon, Christmas Season began.  Not a second before. It was perfect. Christmas lasted until the second week of January in what the Catholics called little Christmas or feast of the Holy Family. Today people take their holiday decor down on December 26th (but that’s because they had them up since Labor Day.