THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 3, 1995 TAG: 9512020193
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: John Pruitt
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
I love Christmas. My neighbor LOVES Christmas. Stand still around her, I joke, and she'll have you fully decorated.
She's been decorating so long that you'd think Christmas on her calendar was not nearly as distant as Christmas is for most of us. Violet's tree - make that one of Violet's trees - was up and lighted Thanksgiving night.
Another soon followed. I haven't been over lately, so I don't have a current count.
If her husband didn't object, she just might have a Christmas tree up by Halloween. In fact, when I failed to take all the white lights off a Japanese maple in the side yard after last Christmas, she wondered why I didn't light it for Easter.
Other than the threat of being carted off to the insane asylum, I guess there'd be nothing wrong with that. A lot of restaurants keep white lights aglow in their plants year round, and it's quite appealing.
Santa's sleigh and his reindeer have adorned Violet's living room mantle for months. When her husband fixed the reindeer to look like they were flying at various heights, she couldn't stand to just put them away somewhere.
Long, long before the Christmas season officially starts - even in the malls - she has Christmas music going.
As much as I enjoy her enjoyment - It really is fun to have her share a Christmas discovery she's made in August - I object to the overwhelming commercialization of the holiday.
I know that doesn't jive, but there's just something about starting the commercial Christmas push in the fall that turns me off. It isn't the store decorations that go up earlier and earlier each year, it's all those messages intended to make me feel like a total laggard if I don't have my Christmas shopping done by now.
Done? Gracious me, it's only Dec. 3, more than three weeks before Christmas. With the right mix of time and money, I can't tell you how much shopping I could get done in that span.
Before Thanksgiving, I heard one woman say she had her gifts bought and wrapped - all of them. I admire her planning. And in a way I envy the time that will free for her to enjoy the holidays, minus the frantic, last-minute pace a lot of us will keep.
Once upon a time, the Christmas season didn't even start until after Thanksgiving. This year, long before Thanksgiving, I was getting reminders from catalog companies that ``there's still time'' to place orders - if I acted right away, and stores were promoting Christmas reductions as if it were season's end.
What's this business about, say, 30 percent off this and that, the minute merchandise is placed on the shelves? Do merchants really expect customers to fall for that?
Please! Walk through some stores nowadays, and all you see are ``percent off'' signs. Off of what? Generally speaking, artificially higher prices so we'll believe the still-high prices are bargains.
I accept the ``percent off'' promise at season's end - short-sleeved shirts at the end of summer, for instance - but when winter coats are 30 percent off before the first cold snap, I know better. No wonder real discount merchandisers are thriving nowadays.
To this point, my focus might make you think I regard shopping and decorating as the highlights of Christmas. I don't. I know there's more, including somehow making time to reflect on the reason for the season and to enjoy the blessings that make it so special.
Doing those things becomes a bit easier when we resolve not to let merchandisers throw us into a tizzy. I might be wrong, but I refuse to accept that it's time to panic three weeks before Christmas.
That's plenty of time for Violet to add to her decorations and for most of us to spend more money than we have.
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