You know, the chief effect of NaBloPoMo on my blogging has been a steep decline in the editing department. I spew out a bunch of random stuff and then the baby fusses upstairs. I hit publish as I'm scooting upstairs, and in the morning I discover that I put up a post with unpaired quotation marks. The horror!
In last night's randomfest, I mentioned Christmas creep. Can we talk about Christmas creep? My neighbor across the street has his Christmas decorations going already. It's not just that he hung them up during that unusually mild weekend so he could turn them on after Thanksgiving. It's like December 23rd over there, with elves and reindeer and strings of red and green lights.
A scroogey person would say "It hurts my eyes to look out the window!" but I am trying not to be that scroogey person.
It's easy for me to be sanctimonious about Christmas creep. We have a perfectly lovely liturgical calendar for November, thankyouverymuch. It's tempting to say, a little petulantly, that Christmas is not what we are supposed to be doing right now. We are supposed to be focusing on those who have died and Christ our great King, says my bossy inner third-grader who doesn't like when people read ahead.
However-- it dawned on me recently that I am contributing to Christmas creep. If I buy my Christmas cards in October, I am telling Snapfish to advertise Christmas cards to me in October (or maybe September). If I want Christmas stamps in early November, I'm sending a message to the post office. If I am trying to get a jump on Christmas, or get finished early with the work of preparing for the holiday, then I am telling the retailers something important.
Should I be surprised that they are listening?
Perhaps the most common piece of advice for mothers who are stressed out about Christmas is that they should start early and do a little at a time. It is advice I have taken to heart. But maybe it is advice that helps to explain our culture's mangled rendition of Christmas: we spend weeks thinking about the details and buying the stuff, and then boom! -- by the time we get to December 25, we're sick of it all.
So how do we plan ahead without encouraging Christmas creep? Should I return to the deal-with-it-all-in-December approach? Is Christmas creep really as annoying as I think it is? Tell me what you think.
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