It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

By the time Halloween decorations began spreading through the malls and adorned the homes in my neighborhood, I could already feel the impending holiday storm building around me. Every year, the evil retail establishment starts earlier and earlier with its push to make year-end sales quotas. The bathing suits have barely dried from the last dips of summer and we're seeing catalogs come in for Thanksgiving table displays.

"It's too commercialized!" everyone frets.

"It's too early!" my friends complain.

"They're playing holiday music on the radio already!" they sneer.

I have a different take on the whole matter. I love that radio station!

What I hate is the cold, so the very first frosts and crisp night air of autumn mean only one thing to me--miserable weather until May. While others are delighting in new sweaters, enjoying the change of seasons and heading off to football games as happy as can be, my one and only solace is knowing that I will be enjoying the sights and sounds of Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Year's very soon.

How can cheerful lights and pretty ribbons and....oh yes...SHOPPING...not be viewed as a wonderful thing? The earlier the better, I say! Bring it on! If I can't be lolling at the pool, I want to jump right into the good stuff. I want to shop without making excuses. I want to wake up early and get good deals. I want the kids to be exhausted from being dragged store to store.

People should lighten up about the holidays coming too much too soon. We need more plastic trees and Muzak in our lives. It's all good. I can't wait to bake cookies. Maybe I'll even wait until Thanksgiving is over this year.

Peace on Earth, baby. And a good dose of Marshall Field's, too.