Merry Thanksyearmas!

Once again, we’ve risen from the ashes of an election year, now it’s time to dust ourselves off and get back to real life. After all, it’s nearly time for Merry Thanksyearmas, when businesses jam holidays together like Paula Deen wrapping up a turducken.

Actually, they started it last month with Merry Halthanksyearmas, when jack o’lanterns, turkey centerpieces and Christmas decorations competed for space on shelves. But, Nov. 1 marked the start of Merry Thanksyearmas season.

It really bothered me a couple of weeks ago to walk down a store aisle and on the right side were skulls on sticks, foam gravestones and rubber bats while on the left side were foam snowmen, candy canes and plastic elves. Talk about rushing the seasons.

I realize I can be a little old-fashioned sometimes, and this is one of those times. Can’t we just have holidays one at a time, even if they are close together. How many others remember when we went trick or treating, then we started getting ready for Thanksgiving a couple of weeks later?

And then, maybe on Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving at the earliest, we’d start getting ready for Christmas? Sometimes it might even be a week or so before the Christmas tree went up and lights went on the houses.

It got trickier for New Year’s since there’s only a week between it and Christmas, although for most of us there really wasn’t that much preparation needed for New Year’s. Then, after New Year’s, all was quiet until Valentine’s Day, because other than sales there didn’t seem to be that much of a big deal really made of Lincoln and Washington’s birthdays as celebrations.

But, just like everything else these days, there’s a rush on everything and instant gratification demanded when it comes to holidays, too. Seriously, this year Halloween decorations, costumes and candy barely had been put on sale before Christmas decorations and supplies were on the shelves.

If it looks as if this is going to happen next year, I think I’ll put a blow-up reindeer being ridden by with a blow-up Headless Horseman in a pilgrim outfit and clutching a turkey in my front yard — on Labor Day.

I really don’t think it’s people so much as big business and corporations who are behind starting Christmas season in August. Granted, the Christmas season is when many stores and companies make a healthy share of their income for the year, but more and more they’re acting as if it’s the only time of year they have any income, when they’re depleting customers of their income.

In typical business fashion, since the coming season is a big money maker, it means each year has to generate more revenue than the preceding year. Making the same, or maybe just a little more, isn’t enough; no, it has to be a record-setting season, or else it’s a failure. I wonder what’s going to happen when such practices top out, as all things do eventually?

Actually, I’ve come to the conclusion there are two Christmases. One is the spiritual holiday, when Christians mark the birth of Jesus, give thanks and share family time. Then there’s the commercial one, when businesses do everything they can to sell as much as they can while people spend money like it’s going out of style, battle over sale items and try to out-do one another. (Darn, there’s that jaded me sneaking out again.)

Now, I’m not complaining about mom-and-pop businesses, or crafters and artisans who create handmade items suitable for gift-giving. This is a good season for them to make a little money. I’m all for them.

I’m aggravated by national chains that started running Christmas commercials a month ago and infecting the populace with their greed. They’re the ones who gave us “Black Friday” and its break-of-day sales a few years back, which began starting earlier and earlier until some began at midnight. This year, we’re getting “Gray Thursday,” with those sales staring the night of Thanksgiving, some of them apparently beginning even before the day’s dinner cools and the giblet gravy congeals.

Give us a break, and I don’t mean a discount on electronic doo-dads.

Personally, I’m taking one holiday at a time, so Happy Thanksgiving, in two weeks. Come back after then for other seasonal greetings. For any who insist on jamming holidays all together, well, Merry Thanksyearmas! And Happy New ValenAbeWash!