CHRISTMNAS…IN OCTOBER?

We are nearing the end of October 2024 here in North Texas and fall has sort of arrived. We have had hints or in my case, a bad tease, of its arrival. Fall is my absolute favorite time of year and there is not much of one here!! In mid-October there were three days of mild temperatures before settling back into the almost 100-degree temps to which we have unwittingly become accustomed. There was another day were some leaves were floating on the wind but I think they died from drought conditions and not because it was time. I’ve been able to wear a sweatshirt a few times only because the a/c is still going full bore in most public establishments and is cold a/f. 

   October usually ushers out the summer heat with school in full swing and the football teams and bands across the state turning on the Friday night lights. The tenth month ushers in daylight savings, pumpkin lattes, well pumpkin everything, the World Series and the holiday season as introduced by Halloween. Halloween is the first batter in the holiday line up

   Fall limped in this year as summer fought her to hold his place in the seasonal lineup just a little bit longer.  The temperatures have slowly dropped and the heat abated but has left in bouts of poor sportsmanship, knocking back the coolness of autumn each time she tried to make a presence. The leaves are dropping one by one versus their regular autumnal tumble. There was no transition and fiery display of fall foliage. There was just brown as the leaves gave up in exhaustion, releasing themselves from their branches and free falling back to earth. There was no proclamation of autumn, no primal scream of fiery orange and red and everything in between, no fanfare; just a quiet resignation as fall staggered across the threshold in an agonal arrival on October 31st.

   There is an order to things and with it, a protocol if you will. Halloween is first, then Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas and finally New Years. Before Black Friday was ever a thing, there were not Christmas commercials prior to Thanksgiving. That’s not the order and a civilized, she says sarcastically, world needs order. For many years now marketers have pushed the holiday season start line further and further back, obliterating any protocol, until the masses let out a collective groan, “it’s not even Thanksgiving yet!” And before the Halloween stuff was put up, Christmas adds snuck in and Thriller was followed by Feliz Navidad on the radio. The Christmas adds came earlier and earlier until they didn’t. And when they didn’t, it was palpable. That’s when COVID killed Christmas. The ads were the canary in our cultural coal mine.

    Very recently, however: I saw a couple of Christmas ads all the while planning our costumes and still buying Halloween candy. And while I would have normally rolled my eyes and cried the battle cry of weary consumers everywhere, “it’s not even Thanksgiving yet”, I was very happy to see the proverbial canary flying out of the mines. I found more comfort than what’s rationale in the airing of those commercials and it warmed my heart. Maybe it’s a harbinger of good things to come and even though there was no red or orange this year, there was yellow!!