From the Editor: Local Grinch Repents?

Trying to come up with an idea for my column for the Holiday Entertainment & Markets issue before Halloween had passed did not come naturally to me. I’ve always been a bit of a codger when it comes to ringing in the holiday season — Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving, let alone before Halloween, prompt me to groan and complain rather than get excited.

Can’t we do one thing at a time? Where is the patience? Isn’t this all an effort by big corporations to start hawking expensive decorations you’ll only use for one month out of the year earlier?

While I’m not ready to admit I’m entirely wrong about any of those complaints, as I struggled to come up with a cheery holiday column, I pondered why early starts to the holidays bothered me so much. Sure, there might not be a logically air-tight reason to start selling Christmas decorations in October. So what?

While I truly cherish spending time with family and reflecting on gratitude at Thanksgiving, it’s not like Christmas decorations and music are replacing many vibrant Thanksgiving cultural artifacts throughout November. I’ll never hear my favorite Thanksgiving song? Less space for insensitive pilgrim and Indian costumes? Oh, the horror!

The Vince Guaraldi Trio’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas” soundtrack is all-time stuff and I only let myself listen to it for one month every year. There are more good Christmas movies than one can reasonably watch in a month. More importantly (by far), it can’t hurt to reflect on the values Christmas celebrates — love, family and faith, if that’s your thing — for at least an extra few weeks.

I recognize that my biggest problem with the holiday season being a mild fatigue toward its charms is a massive privilege. If the holidays are a difficult time for you for more serious reasons, please don’t take this as an inducement to try to force yourself to enjoy cheesy Hallmark movies.

However, whether your family is the one you were born with or one you’ve found over the years, I hope that you start celebrating them extra early as your local supermarket turns red and green this November. I, for one, can confirm that “A Charlie Brown Christmas” sounds just as good in October as it does in December.