It's the 12th of November, but it seems to be coming on Christmas. Or so the signs and non-seasonal decorations tell us. Last night as I drove home in the post-Daylight Savings Time darkness, I noticed the local county co-op alight with wreaths, ornaments, and outdoor garlands. It's the same everywhere I look. It's been that way here in the nearly tropical South since sometime before Halloween, when I passed a fashionable home long after dark and noticed a fully decorated, brightly lit Christmas tree glowing in the living room.What's going on here? I'm feeling holiday compression.
Advent, to me, is a particular and very special time in the religious tradition I celebrate. It's come, instead, to mean the Gold Rush of sales promotions, the stampede to living better materially. People actually get up at 2 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving to get those 5 a.m. WalMart promotions. Me, I sleep in.
We're not in the Southern hempisphere, just the American South, for goodness' sake. The heart of the Bible belt. Please, please, please give me some breathing room to celebrate Thanksgiving and time to remember all for which I'm truly grateful.Give me a river. A Joni Mitchell blue one.
It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
But it don't snow here
It stays pretty green
I'm gonna make a lot of money
Then I'm going to quit this crazy scene. . .
Well, at least part of that is true. And to all, I say, enjoy the fall while we have it.
In my Appalachian childhood home [OK, southeastern Virginia, in Norfolk, but my gramma was from so far deep in the country that "Mayberry" seemed to her like a big city, so sue me!], we were not allowed to play Christmas music until Santa had passed by in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which my gramma allowed us to watch on the newfangled TV. [In the fullness of time, I now believe they were making up rules spontaneously, but still.] Then we had to put the Christmas recordings up for another year, no lie, on New Year's Eve. No matter how the tradition actually evolved, I still think that's a pretty good window.
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