| Christmas
Comes Early |
| Thanksgiving officially is celebrated the fourth Thursday
of November, which makes this year's holiday the last Thursday
of the month. Thanksgiving traditionally has been the kickoff
for the Christmas season, which means that Christmas shopping
this year will take place over a 3-1/2-week period. |
| That has retail merchants and others who depend on Christmas
as their biggest sales season of the year worried. Not enough
time to shop, they say. |
| Indeed, they may be correct. |
| There are fewer than four weeks before Christmas and I've
barely finished my Thanksgiving dinner. In fact, the fridge
is filled with leftover turkey and dressing, my home is still
the Thanksgiving gathering place for our family for the next
day or two, and there are still a couple of football games
to watch. |
| It's hard to believe that my children and my wife are already
sending me their Christmas wish list ("wish" is the operative
word here) when I'm still trying to digest all that turkey
and those sweet potatoes. |
| I'm not in the Christmas mood yet, and I only have 3-1/2
weeks to get there. As usual, my gift buying these days takes
place over the phone or the Internet for my brothers, who
are easy to buy for. What sausage selection do I want to send
them this year? Or maybe I'll really spurge and send them
one of those Maine baskets of maple syrup, pancake mix and
bacon, or a basket of cheeses from Wisconsin, or maybe a selection
of apples from Washington. |
| It is equally easy to Christmas shop for my wife, Betsy¤I
just visit Aspen Jewelers and say "pick out something for
Betsy." They know her well and simply give me a selection
from which to choose. |
| Let's see, I'll take one of those, and one of those, and
one of those, and, hey, that one over there looks pretty nice,
too. |
| I have it easy, but Betsy has to buy for her family, our
children and our grandchildren. |
| No sausage for them. |
| I pretend to help by wrapping presents, putting names on
those little gift tags, making sure we have enough tape and
a pair of scissors. But I don't attempt to make a bow. Someone
gave us a gift bow-making gizmo this year and I can't even
get it out of the box. |
| Good thing. |
| In the end, of course, the tree will look impressive and
the decorated packages will seem to go on forever, and if
we don't forget the two gifts we stashed in the basement,
everyone will have a great Christmas. |
| I'd like to tell you about the year Betsy stored a soccer
goal in the basement for our son (it wouldn't fit under the
tree) and we completely forgot about it Christmas morning.
Betsy found it in the spring and pretended she just bought
it as an Easter gift. |
| But I'd better not tell that story. |
| In reality, we have 52 weeks to shop, but most of us do
it in the last three weeks before Christmas anyway. So even
though shopping time for Christmas has been compressed this
year, we'll all manage to get it done. |
| And that's Our Town this week. |
