Today, 15 October, is when I start celebrating the fall/winter holidays. Several people asked why, so here’s a blog post to lay it our for you.
I typically get the hankering to celebrate Christmas about the end of August, which is of course Wrong. The farther we get into the fall, the worse it gets. On the other hand, I really do love Thanksgiving as well. When I was a kid Halloween was awesome, but it doesn’t do much for me anymore. My kids on the other hand love it like crazy.
If you start to celebrate a given holiday too far ahead of time it starts to lose its specialness. It’s pretty common to not do Christmas stuff until after Thanksgiving, and I hold to that pretty hard. If I didn’t I’d start in… August.
When Thanksgiving then? I typically start celebrating Thanksgiving right after Halloween. That gives me about three weeks to enjoy decorations, music, food, and a couple parties.
My youngest daughter starts planning for Halloween on 1 Nov., and talks about it for the rest of the year. We made a rule, no talking about Halloween until September. Halloween really doesn’t do much for me personally besides kick off the holiday season. The important bit is how soon before Halloween can I watch “It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” without getting tired of it by Halloween. Because that’s important.
So it’s really about not starting things so early that I get tired of them before it’s the real Day.
This year we left our garland of Christmas lights up on the mantel after all the other decorations came down. It’s been a great reminder of that ‘most wonderful time of the year.’… so all year we’ve been looking forward to it. 😀
Thanksgiving is a close second, so it is only fitting that we help Amy’s brother & his family go get a Christmas tree while visiting them over the break – the fulfillment of one fine holiday commences the next!
Did you know Sophi is allowed to talk about Halloween at Grandma’s house anytime? Teehee!!!