There are 18 days left until Christmas. Do I have any Christmas spirit yet? Oh, hells no.
I’m one of those increasingly rare people who enjoy Christmas but get really sick of it really fast. If it were up to me the tree would go up no earlier than December 18th, the shopping would start about the same time, and the whole thing would be packed up and put away by New Years Day.
Having said that, the reality is society won’t let me wait that long. Shopping commenced in earnest last night, and some preliminary decorating will start today. The kids are at their dad’s this weekend so we won’t do too much without them. We’re just trying to get a jump on it to make it easier for them next week.
I’m not happy about it, but I’m resigned to the inevitability. Scroll back through this blog to late September and you will see a camera phone snap of Christmas stuff being sold at toys-r-us. The season has been in pretty much full swing since early October. We live very close to a busy financial district in Salem, NH, and the Christmas shopping traffic nightmare that hits us annually has been running non stop for a month already.
There is nothing we can do to fight it off. Christmas season is a 3-4 month event now and no matter how badly I want it to be reduced to two weeks, it just isn’t happening. There is just too much greed out there to let us have a simple spirit of giving.
Inside the Red Head's Head 