Is Christmas starting earlier these days, or is it just that fall’s going later?
I can never say for sure. It could be both. Or neither. I don’t know, but I did have to give my head a shake a couple of weeks ago when I walked into a store and found it heaving with fake trees, plastic elves and cheery holiday jingles.
The place was a veritable winter wonderland. Ho. Ho. Ho. The trouble was that Christmas was the last thing on my mind. It was the week before Halloween. I was shopping for ghosts and goblins. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to be shopping for the week before Halloween? Halloween stuff?
But the only Halloween stuff left in the store was in a sale bin at the back.
They’d cleared away the rest to make room for Christmas stuff. Huh?
Luckily, I managed to snag the very last pirate-with-one-eyeball-gouged-out. But there was nary a ghost in sight and it was slim pickins’ for goblins too.
And here I thought I was being organized by doing my Halloween shopping a week before Halloween. Usually I’m there the day before. Silly me.
“Is it just me?” I politely asked the girl at check out. “Or is Christmas arriving unusually early this year?”
The girl rolled her eyes. I wasn’t sure if it was a “yes-Christmas-is-starting-earlier” roll of the eyes, or a “Lady-will-you-please-shut-up-and-get-out-of-my-face” roll. I suspected the latter, so I shut up, paid for the one-eyed pirate and got out of her face.
But here’s the thing that really messed me up: When I walked out of the Christmas wonderland, the parking lot was blazing in hot sunshine. By the time I got to the car, I was wilting. Ditto my one-eyed pirate. The outdoor temperature was a whooping 25 C according to the thermometer on my car.
So you tell me: Is that just me? Or is something askew? And if something is askew, what is it? Christmas or the weather? Or me?
I hate to think I’m turning into one of those old farts always blathering on about the way things used to be. But I’d just been whacked over the head by a rousing chorus of “Joy to the World” and two minutes later I’m overheating in my car and toying with the idea of turning on the air conditioning. (I didn’t.)
The early-arrival-of-Christmas thing, I can handle. I will simply ignore it until a time when it suits me to pay attention – like, say - the second week of December.
But the 25C-in-late-October business is harder to ignore. Sure, it’s pleasant, but I don’t recall that from my youth. And I’m not THAT old. The last few Christmases have been green. I don’t recall that from my youth either.
I don’t like to think that in the future we’ll have to make do with dreaming of a white Christmas because they’ll all be green. And I hate to think the day is coming when we’ll be doing our last-minute Halloween shopping in late July because the stores will be full of Christmas by August.
But when you’re wilting in the blazing hot sunshine with Joy to the World rattling around in your head and a Halloween one-eyed pirate at your side, you have to wonder what’s coming next.
Freelance one-eyed pirate owner Gail Lethbridge has finished her Christmas shopping and is now starting on Easter. Visit her blog: gifedtypist.com
