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A holiday proposition to get us to spring

4 min read

A meme going around social media has a plausible explanation for why we are suffering this cold weather and snow so early in the season. It blames the arctic blast on the impatient anticipators who put up their Christmas decorations the day after Halloween.

“You know who you are and please stop” is the message, and I can’t disagree. That blame makes as much sense as anything else. I, like many, was not prepared, either emotionally or garment-wise, for this weather. A documentary film shoot made me stand on a busy street in Oakland this week. With only a Novemberish jacket and no hat, I finally pulled my scarf around my head and tied it beneath my chin.

“Nice babushka,” said a passerby.

I counted on my unmittened fingers. Five more months of this before spring. It’s a cruel bit of self punishment, thinking of March while not yet at Thanksgiving. You know the Western Pennsylvania March: grey days strung end to end while cinder-frosted piles of snow linger all around. What a depressing thought.

But that thought allowed me to conjure a different spirit, an idea that might make February and March less gray while stopping the ever-forward and nonsensical rushing of Christmas.

We should flip the holidays on their sparkly heads, do a 180-degree turn that makes Christmas Day the beginning of the holiday season and not the culmination. In other words, the sparkle season will begin Christmas Eve and extend through mid-March. Too long, you say? Not exactly. I’ve seen Christmas doodads in the stores since the day before Halloween. And if it’s common for people to leave their trees and lights up through the end of January, that would mean the holiday season now stretches for three months.

Push that ahead a bit, and if you start Christmas on Dec. 24 and add three months, that gives us holiday cheer all the way through March. Imagine what that would do to the grayest of months.

There’s always been this long, dark gap in our year; all we had to do was move the holiday forward, to the months when we can really use the good cheer.

This schedule does not deny us anything on the front end. After all, doesn’t Halloween candy bring happiness through at least mid-November, at which time we start thinking about Thanksgiving? Leftovers get us at least through the first week of December, and then it’s just a couple of weeks to wait for Christmas.

Growing up, I had a friend whose tree didn’t go up until Christmas Eve, when Santa Claus did the work. That family had as happy a holiday as anyone else.

Of course, this schedule would bring push-back from retail. The stores wouldn’t be displaying snowmen in October unless the customers were buying snowmen in October, but I’d argue that shoppers could buy a snowman early, but wait until Dec. 24 to put it on the roof.

Could we all agree on that?

Think about late January – the ice and the wind and the snow shoveling. Now think about coming home to a decorated tree, and maybe some cookies, and a few extra presents under the tree. And think about February. It does have that bump of happiness around the 14th with the hearts and all, but after that, wouldn’t we all appreciate sliding into March with some lights still hanging from the front door?

Anyone up for a holiday party for the Ides of March? Wear your red and green. There will be Christmas music, and I’ll made the eggnog.

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