Something is bothering me this Christmas season. It’s that it’s not yet the Christmas season. It’s the Thanksgiving season!!!!!!

With all the diversity of my workplace and neighborhood, I’ve had to learn to call the entire stretch from late October to the New Years’ day the ‘holiday’ season. That’s ok, because I know what I celebrate and I wouldn’t think of saying happy birthday to someone because it’s my birthday. So, in the same way it feels a bit odd to say Merry Christmas to my Jewish friends, just as it would be odd for them to say Happy Hanukkah to me. So, for this post, MY holiday example will not be Festivas, the secular holiday where individuals air their grievances from the past year. My example will be Christmas.

What’s really bothering me is that our culture seems to be blatantly jumping to the Christmas season and completely ignoring Thanksgiving. It may be that the economy is down and all the retailers know that very few people sit around the turkey opening their Thanksgiving gifts (that will be next year’s consumerism ploy).

So, everyone is jumping to Christmas. I don’t like it. Just as I think it’s wrong to discuss your next vacation while you’re still on the current vacation, or discuss your next meal while eating your current meal, we shouldn’t be playing up Christmas when we haven’t yet celebrated the next holiday, Thanksgiving. I also think it’s a bit of a reflection of our culture. We’re less inclined to be thankful, grateful for what we have. We can’t wait to get more stuff. We don’t want to reflect on how our country was formed. We’d rather get stuff.

This weekend, I ran to the grocery store to pick up a few things. While walking through the green, yellow and orange peppers  in the produce section at HEB, I heard “Santa Claus is coming to town.” (Hope that song doesn’t stick in your mind now.) I have to tell you, while I liked the upbeat nature of the music and perhaps it tempted me into spending more than usual, its not right. Tonight, the kids and I watched an episode of Good Eats before reading time and some of the advertisements (which I normally mute) had snowflakes and sleigh bells ringing. Everyone knows that imagery has nothing to do with turkeys, stuffing or the Dallas Cowboys versus the Washington Redskins! I actually yelled at the television. I’ve become one of those dads.

And today at work, I went to Google’s homepage to search for something and “Google” has Christmas lights hanging from the G to the E. Is this really true?

My, what is this world coming to. We’re living in a new neighborhood this year and you can be sure I’ll be keeping a close eye on my neighbors and noting who puts up Christmas lights first.

What about you? Have you seen Christmas come earlier this year that in year’s past? Have you seen anyone advertising pre-Christmas specials? Anyone driving around with Christmas wreaths on their cars? Any Santa hats at the office yet?