It drives you crazy that Christmas decorations are in stores before you've even started thinking about what you'll be doing on Halloween. Christmas music comes on the radio two weeks before Thanksgiving and you want to punch the first person who doesn't wait until after the turkey to turn it up. And you're too broke to even think about all the people you wish you could buy presents for, so you wish that the stories would please stop shoving the brightly covered advertisements down your throat.
I've done it all. Complained about snow coming too early, glanced horrified looks down the seasonal aisle in October. I've even threatened to pull over if someone suggested Christmas music in November. And what has it accomplished?
Honestly, a pretty miserable lead-up to the "most wonderful time of the year."
It's left a lot of room for reflection. What about Christmas music before Thanksgiving made me so angry? This whole season is supposed to be about love and thankfulness, and all I did was complain about it. Black Friday starting at 3pm on Thanksgiving Day? Hey, nobody's making anyone go stand in line for that. You can just as easily not.
As much as you may loathe the overpriced red and green, no one is forcing you to buy it. You can just as easily walk past the plastic Christmas trees towards the ingredients for stuffing. This is not one of those, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" situations. It's more like, if you can't beat 'em… then don't be a sore loser about it.
Yes, Christmas is commercialized. And so is Easter and Mother's Day and even your wedding. Companies profit off of these things because they mean something. And they mean something because people have chosen them to mean something. Companies make money; it's what they do. The commercialization factor isn't going away.
But that doesn't mean we have to become stressed out and depressed by it. You can get into the holiday spirit without paying $20 a person for a picture with Santa. Holiday craziness is here to stay, whether any of us really want it to or not. But we don't have to get wrapped up in it. We can just as easily stay home, make popcorn strands and paper snowflakes, and enjoy being together.
There's a choice to be made. We can all remember why Christmas has meaning, why it's important. Or we can choose to let the holiday conglomerate ruin it all.
