So this is Christmas?…
T'was four months before Christmas. Cha-ching!
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My wife put my butt to work around the house this weekend. Blame a combination of nice weather and that ever-present ever-expansive creep of the holiday season.
We’re moving past the ah-look-at-the-pretty-leaves stage into the full-on grab-the-rake-and-pick-up-those-damn-leaves mode. I always want to start a bonfire and be done with it, but I suppose my neighbors wouldn’t be terribly fond of me anymore if I burned down a city block. Outdoor chores — winterizing the house, cleaning leaves out of gutters, etc. — just scratch the surface of things “needing” done.
One thing you have to understand about my wife is that she doesn’t just observe holidays — she dives in head first. It must be the decorator inside of her because she spent half the day Sunday putting away the various Halloween figurines and cheesy signs and digging all of those containers full of Christmas paraphernalia out of the spider-infested garage. Over the next few days, our house will transform into a winter wonderland of lights and ornaments. She even sets up a miniature snow village on the ping-pong table, a collection of tiny ceramic “It’s A Wonderful Life”-esque moments. I always enjoy it when our cat prances through the town square terrorizing the townspeople.
My first reaction was, “Honey, isn’t it a little early to put up the Christmas decorations? It’s only Nov. 8th.” But then I realized what a pain in the butt all of this stuff is to assemble. If you’re going to go to that much effort, might as well leave it up for a while. When I was a bachelor, I left a string of Christmas lights up all year long. Nobody seemed to mind. Now that I’m married, though, the first week in January, I’ll be back in that cold garage putting stuff back in storage while the Mrs. hits the Christmas crap store looking for heavily discounted stuff. I pointed out to her that we already have 5 Christmas trees, all fake, including one that we never opened, yet she always insists that we need a new tree.
My kid likes to watch cartoons, but every 4 minutes there is a new barrage of toy commercials prompting her to speak those inevitable words, “Daddy, I want that. Will you get me that?” Maybe I can convince her that I would have brought her all of that stuff if it was up to me, but that Santa guy is kind of a jerk. I blame the tooth fairy for stealing her money too. Ha Ha.
Retailers started hyping Christmas toy sales weeks ago. Seems like every year the marketing push begins earlier and earlier as stores hope to squeeze every possible dime out of us. Can’t say as I blame them for trying to make a buck, especially this year.
Disney’s “A Christmas Carol” got the holiday season started by earning $31 million at the box office over the weekend while the Cameron Diaz horror flick “The Box” debuted in sixth place with just $7.9 million. There’s your proof, perhaps, that Halloween is so last week.