What a strange time of year late September has become. Each morning I wake to find the air outside around 20 degrees cooler than it was last summer, last month, and I turn on my computer to look for the baseball standings just as I have since early April to see where the Pittsburgh Pirates are and hope that this could be the year they have a shot at going deep into post-season play. They made it to first round play last year as a wild-card team for the first time in 22 years but they haven't made it to the World Series since 1979.
Maybe this year.
As I write this piece they are in second place, 2 1/2 games behind the St. Louis Cardinals, the same team that knocked them out of the playoffs last year but it is a very good place to be with just 10 games left in the regular season. We at least still have a shot. All the Pirates need to do is what they have been doing for the past two weeks; surging! Now riding a 4 game winning streak while winning 8 of their last 10 games. These final ten games have suddenly become their entire season. I don't recall any teams anywhere in Major League Baseball winning 14 in a row so I am expecting a few losses as they close out the regular season but they cannot afford to lose any more than a few if they want to play in October. October itself is what this post is about, not post-season baseball but the Christmas season.
We are more than a month away from Halloween and I have been seeing all around me the reminders that Christmas will be here soon; one neighbor was seen yesterday stapling outdoor lights to her porch just yesterday and another neighbor never took hers down from last year. The other neighbors have been snickering each time she turns them on at night and they have been since mid January. It has looked odd all year and even more so when she was lighting them last summer, last month. In less than a month her house won't stand out as much as it has for the past eight or nine because by then there will be many porches around here all aglow. When the lighted inflatable Santa goes up in the front yard down the street I will know that Halloween cannot be far off.
Poor Thanksgiving; sometime during the month between it and Halloween is when a few local radio stations will begin playing Christmas music; the television stations already have by airing jingles around promos for upcoming holiday programming and during certain commercials for stores that have already put up their displays for pre-Christmas sales. At least two people on Facebook have boasted that they have already finished their Christmas shopping for this year and one young gal, not to be out-flanked by any of the other early birds said she will begin her Christmas shopping for next year on Thanksgiving. Her reason? She loves the competition that wages on Black Friday so she will begin when the stores open the night before and then camp-out that night on the parking lot of a nearby "Best Buy" store. Before that weekend ends she hopes to have her Christmas shopping done until the 2016 holiday season.
In my own home I am already sick of looking at the fall decorations that have surrounded the mantle over the fireplace; the old woman put those up in mid July and sometime this weekend I am sure she will bring the plastic pumpkins and stuffed witches and black cats up from the basement and scatter them about. The day after Halloween the artificial Christmas tree will go up and the bannister leading upstairs will be draped in garland, ribbons and bows and miniature white lights and the pumpkins, cats and witches will be replaced with stuffed animals dressed for Christmas celebrations.
On December 26th all of that will be back in the basement and I won't see any of it again until a few weeks before my birthday in July. But I too am looking ahead to next year's holiday season...sort of. I am hoping that next September I will be logging on to my computer each morning to see if the Pirates are again in the hunt for a playoff spot, but not just as a team who is trying to make it back in but as the reigning World Series Champions! I have a lot to anticipate before this playoff race is settled but Christmas hasn't yet taken over any of of my thoughts. I am far too old to even be giddy that Halloween is approaching and when it passes I still won't be thinking much about Christmas. I guess I am the Neanderthal man that many around me say I am, especially when it comes to traditions I still hold firmly to. Thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday since I became too old to play with little-boy toys so when the baseball season is over my next big anticipation will be the last Thursday in November because I generally skip Halloween altogether.
How we do Christmas in the 21st Century is nowhere near how it was done when I was a kid but Thanksgiving is that one holiday out of the year that few bother to make different. Always on a Thursday and with at least one tradition that no one bothers to change; the biggest and best meal of the year served on the most glamorous table setting of the year. Some still remember to give thanks for what they have on that day but no one loses sight of how they want the day to unfold. For me it is the real launch of the holiday season and it lends fodder to my arsenal of words when anyone jumps me for calling it the holiday season instead of the Christmas season. Those with thin skin or who drown themselves in their faith so much that they feel it is necessary to shout how offended they are by the term holiday when we speak of the season that surrounds Christ's birthday. I happen to believe that God is amused by them more than he might understand their rage at everyone who doesn't feel exactly as they do about the months leading up to his son's birthday. My poor Jewish friends, how bad they must feel when someone chastises them for not saying Merry Christmas to them. Many of them have believed as I have for a long time that saying Happy Holidays might be the safest way to go when in the company of people of varying faiths. As a matter of fact, I am rarely in the company of large groups that all believe exactly the same! I think it has something to do with residing in a country that offers freedom of religion.
However, I won't hear any of that outrage from those I can expect to hear it from until after Halloween but to my way of thinking I shouldn't hear it until December 25th because the season really isn't about him for a large segment of America, we have made it about shopping. Those same people who are offended anytime someone says Happy Holidays might be in the crowds now perusing the holiday displays in stores and may even find themselves in front of televisions weeks before the big day watching Rudolf, Charlie Brown and Frosty. They may be dusting off their Christmas figurines and contemplating how to decorate their porches for the season right now; they may even be in the stores this weekend to stock up on decorations because I did receive a flyer in yesterday's mail announcing a sale for them this weekend at Walmart.
Happy Holidays!
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