We had a grand total of ZERO Trick or Treaters again this year. Their loss. They probably all went to the mall and got coupons for hats and socks or incense or something. Still, I wore my pirate costume and we had spaghetti, so it was a good old fashioned Pastafarian holiday.
I am not going to talk about how my childhood Halloweens managed to rock and suck at the same time. I've done that already.
Apparently, a radio station in Kansas City kicked off their all-Christmas format. I guess the two elevator music stations in the city have a rivalry. Er, do they not know what their main purpose is? They're the station that plays into the phone when you put someone on hold. If they're playing Christmas music, you can't use the station for this and you have to find something else. This would be why listenership is down for these sorts of stations. People want elevator music to be elevator music.
That aside,
I like Christmas music. I will occasionally listen to it in the middle of summer, especially stuff like Mannheim Steamroller and TSO because it's different than Gene Autry and Rudolph. But that doesn't mean that I get out all the decorations and start the countdown.
Not even children start to consider Christmas this early. At least, they didn't in my day. Halloween lasted in the mind until the good candy was gone and by the time all that was left were those orange and black peanut butter kisses, there was another event on the horizon. Parent Teacher Conferences.
It was widely understood there was no point in thinking about Christmas until after conferences, because that one meeting could change the course of your entire holiday season. Perhaps the children of today don't have the proper fear of authority instilled in them, but even us good kids knew this was a bigger deal than a report card.
After conferences, there was Thanksgiving, which was pretty much a non holiday, but it meant an early out and there would be "turkey with gravy over mashed potatoes" for lunch. I was shocked to discover that this year, the district has planned chicken nuggets. In fact, many of the lunches we used to have are gone, stripped from the menu presumably because of their carbs or the chances that the kid's going to have it that night for supper.
Spaghetti is gone, not appearing once in the whole year. Fish sticks do not appear, not even on Fridays. The many variations on the hamburger- hamburger, sloppy Joe, beef burger- have been seriously reduced to just the beef burger. These kids are eating tacos and chicken nuggets every single week. Tuna casserole and green bean tater tot casserole are, I'm happy to report, also absent.
The peanut butter and jelly sandwich lunch is gone, replaced by something that's probably just a government issue Lunchable. Pancakes, the mecca of school lunch, appear only once, three days before the end of school when everyone has already taken off to Disney World to "beat the rush". Waffles do not appear at all. Little Smokies, the buzzword of every child who ever ate school lunch in the 80's and 90's, are reduced to twice a year.
Obviously, schools have declared a war on lunch.
Still, with all this to worry about, Christmas didn't enter the picture until Thanksgiving, when, while setting the table and being admonished by grandma to be careful with the plates, some relative looked at you and asked you what you wanted for Christmas, because chances were good they wouldn't see you again until then. And you realised that you hadn't even thought about it, because Christmas was so far away.
A whole month away. Your teacher wouldn't even put the decorations up until the second week, at which point some child would begin again the Great Santa Claus Debate. You were either a Doubter and a Killjoy, or a Crusader for St Nick, there was no middle ground.
You'd either be taken on a field trip to see The Nutcracker or watch the clips from Fantasia sometime between the 15th and the 22nd, and by then, it was serious. Lists had been written and rewritten, the Toys 'R' Us catalogue dog eared and worn. By the time Rudolph and Frosty came on television, you were decorating the Christmas tree and counting down the last days till school released on your 7-Up countdown calendar (come on, I can't have been the only kid to have one).
The anticipation of this strict time line is essential to the enjoyment of the holiday. You've got to leave that space between your pumpkins and your Santa Clauses. That's the natural order of things. Get it right, Kansas City.