The Holiday Rush Has Arrived!
Well, we held out as long as we could in the Snyder household (at my insistence), but come the break of the post-Thanksgiving dawn on Friday, November 25th, my youngest began the constant barrage of “Dad, when are we going to put up the Christmas tree?” Honestly, she should be sent to Gitmo as an interrogator, as I’m convinced she could break every dangerous prisoner there inside of a week. (For those of you wondering – the tree went up that day).
It seems like the holiday season gets longer and longer every year, but it feels like there is less and less time to get everything in. Call me old-fashioned, but I wholeheartedly refuse to start Christmas decorating prior to Thanksgiving (as Turkey Day should get its due). Each year; however, Christmas, Inc. keeps trying to infringe upon my November calendar.
Radio stations started playing non-stop Christmas carols early last week. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy listening to carols and songs of the season, but 30 days of them gets a little long in the tooth (and quite honestly, one hearing of Ronnie Spector’s excruciating single “Best Christmas Ever” is enough to make me want to convert to Judaism).
It seems as if I have barely gotten the first leftover turkey sandwich safely in my gullet – and we’re off to the races in order to get all of the Christmas “chores” completed before time runs out on December 25th.
TV and radio tell me how much I’m missing out on by not shopping their fabulous sales. Truth be told, if I can’t find that “must have” gift on Amazon.com and have it shipped directly to the house, it may not be purchased at all. There’s a long list of Christmas cards to prepare and my wife insists on hand-crafting our yuletide greetings each year with the quarter-million dollar collection of “Stamping Up” gear she (or I should say “we”) accumulated years ago for this very purpose. The kids are in what seems like a never-ending line-up of Christmas concerts (seriously, when did it become a thing to play at the Valley Mall in front of J.C. Penney’s?) What’s that? We’re in the church play? Let me jot down those rehearsals. Thank heaven my girls don’t play youth basketball. I don’t think I could fit in all the practices, games, and tournaments my friends seem to have to wrangle.
There are gifts to wrap, cookies to bake, and outdoor lights to hang. Dinners to plan, family to visit, pictures to take – and can we squeeze in a viewing of “A Charlie Brown Christmas”? When are we going to drive through the Christmas light display at Byron Memorial park in Williamsport? The list goes on and on. I need a personal assistant to interpret all of the events, appointments, and notes on my December calendar. If I were an Uber driver, I’d owe myself $500 in gas and mileage fees.
Through it all, though – there will be that one moment I get to savor. The quiet stillness of a mid-December evening when everyone else is out of the house, it’s cold outside, my holiday candle lights are on in the windows, and there’s some Christmas music playing softly in the background (preferably some Nat King Cole or Bing Crosby). The decorated tree has lit up the entire living room, and I’m sitting on the couch wrapping presents on the coffee table, adding each one under the tree as I finish putting a name on the tag. I may even be drinking a holiday beverage or two. For all the hustle and bustle, it’s moments like this that make the season worthwhile.
In all the noise and clatter of the holiday season, I hope you find a moment in your hectic holiday schedule to enjoy.