Christmas ..12:00.. Warp Speed

Let me preface this by saying I really am not a Grinch. I love the holidays-maybe even more than most as evidenced by the fact that I own just about every Christmas CD known to man, and I have enough decorations to easily fill 2 trees and multiple color schemes. My darling husband even put on holiday music today and it sounded great.. it's a gloomy day and it feels like the perfect launch into Thanksgiving week.
Anyhoooo, in a moment of peace between the Pumpkin laying down and the next task that beckoned, Idecided to do a quick fridge purge. How does this tie into the holidays, you ask?
Well, my way of making room in the fridge is taking food that is marginal but still edible and tossing it over the back deck for the critters. Living out in the country on a hillside, there's deer, raccoons, coyotes and turkeys that all like to stroll through our yard down below so it's a good bet it's going to get eaten. Everybody wins.. I clean my fridge and don't feel guilty for letting another perfectly good bunch of arugula wilt, and the critters eat food as opposed to neighborhood cats. However, I am a klutz as evidenced today when I accidentally lost the Tupperware with the strawberries I was donating to nature. As I was starting back up the outside stairs I did a double take.. on two lawns I saw big, giant inflatable Santas, along with my neighbor standing on his roof like Clark Griswold putting up his lights. Dude, I am all for the holiday spirit but it's not even freaking Thanksgiving yet! Let us enjoy our cornucopias, turkeys and ornamental squash a wee bit longer before trying to race us into the next holiday. I guess the stores that have been pushing Christmas on us since August are finally making people drink the kool-aid. Sad, because these are usually the same people that ruthlessly cast their trees out on Dec 26.
Having spent much of my childhood in Europe I guess that had an impact on me. There, the holidays were less about consumerism and more about the gentle beauty of the season. Christmas Eve was the big kickoff to twelve days of celebrating, culminating on January 6 with the eating of the King's Cake.
I have certainly adapted to life in the US, and I'll be eagerly trimming our tree shortly after Thanksgiving. Until then, I will proudly display my harvest decorations and nurture my mums until I transplant them in favor of pointsettias.
There's my rant.:)