Friday, September 15, 2006

Too Much Mixing And We Forget Why We're There

The stores are putting out Christmas merchandise. I'm not ready for that. Besides, it looks stupid sitting on the shelves beside the bags of candy corn and ceramic Pilgrims and those plastic hanging skeletons that are strung together like wind chimes.

Christmas is not something I can think rationally about when I'm looking at rows of scarecrows and styrofoam tombstones and jack-o-lanterns and silk autumm leaves and and clown noses and fake blood.

Heck, I'm so old that I remember when no self-respecting store would dream of putting out anything to do with Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving. I think we all might appreciate each individual holiday more if the holidays were given back their individuality. As it is now, each holiday's paraphernalia is all mixed together and it's hard to see each Significant Day of the Year's personality any more. The shelves are too crowded and it all blends together into a mix that's impossible to deal with. Once in a while, someone who knows how will take a deep breath, and go in there to make sense of the whole thing and try to straighten it out, but before that person reaches the end of the aisle, the people coming behind have already messed it up again. Even when a person knows the Reason for the Season, it's hard to find things to represent that season when it's all thrown into the 'seasonal' section of the store and it's every man for himself in there. And who among us has never discovered a sad, forgotten little black cat stuffed back behind the candy canes and twinkling net lighting for the shrubbery, long after its time has past, and it's too late to do anything with it except feel a twinge of regret that it wasn't discovered sooner, when it was logically possible to do right by it?

If we keep these things each to its own time, and let those individual times unfold as they were meant to unfold, we would then be able to really LOOK at them, and see them for the miraculous pieces of individual wonder that they really are.

I'm sure it's more convenient to mix them all together and Caveat Emptor, but is it the best way? I don't think it is.

One holiday at a time, and no mixing.

Anyone who might see an analogy here that reminds him/her of our public schools just has too much imagination. Eat some peanut butter kisses and a candy cane and get over it.