Weekend!
When I was a kid, there was a debate over when The Holiday Season started.
Some said “December 10th”, because this gave two weeks until Holiday. As a child, I thought this horribly draconian.
Some said “The day after Thanksgiving!”, because they owned retail stores.
Some said “December 1st!”, because of some vague thing having to do with the month, I guess. Trying to split the difference, I guess.
As I get older and older, I realize that the draconians were right.
The music, mostly.
The music.
Though, of course, the Holiday section that gets put up in the back corner of Target gets put up in September. Which strikes me as the sort of thing that would have made the draconians from my youth bellow “I TOLD YOU IT WOULD COME TO THIS!!!!”
Of course, the hobby/craft stores need Holiday sections in the back because, hey, it takes months and months to do some of those things so if you want to unveil them in time to put them up behind the cash register of your store in time for the day after Thanksgiving, you’ve gotta get started as early as possible.
And then people can say “Man, we used to wait until December.”
So, this weekend, I am going to go out and get groceries at the various stores around town and, officially, have no leg to stand on as I walk down the soup aisle and they’re playing “Jingle Bell Rock”.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Image is “Play” by Clare Briggs. Used with permission of the Briggs estate.)
They’ve been playing Christmas music at work since Black Friday. It brings a whole new meaning to the Black in Black Friday. I’m ahead in the holiday shopping! I’ve got Junior’s first wrestling tournament this weekend and more holiday shopping. I should also shop for food because I’ve served cereal one too many times this week, LOL.
As most everyone knows, pregnancy is all about the week by week updates. I will now subject you all to that torture: More shots. So many shots :(. Today I’m five weeks and five days pregnant, so the intended father is giddy. He’s had his embryos frozen since 2014, so that should give you a good idea of how excited he is. I’m thinking of inviting him out to lunch, but I’m a total chicken. I bought Surrobaby (I’ve got to find out his name at lunch) his present – a book, of course! It’s called Why I’m Special. Junior is also receiving books about surrogacy – The Very Kind Koala and Sophia’s Broken Crayons. I’m still working on Intended Dad’s holiday gift, but I’m really excited about it!Report
@miss-mary
I have to ask, how does the father have embryo’s frozen…? (And I apologize in advance for how personal of a question I just asked. Feel free to tell me to mind my own business.)Report
I don’t mind at all! Surrogacy education has kind of become a passion of mine. In 2014 the father, we’ll call him D, got donated eggs from a fertility clinic. D gave his own genetic material to be combined with the eggs. The fertility doc and embryologist made three viable embryos from the material. The embryos were two weeks and five days old when they were transferred in to me. This is the prime time to do it because the shell is coming off of the embryo so it can implant itself in the uterine lining. This process is called IVF (in vitro fertilization) and is the procedure used in gestational surrogacy. This means I am not genetically related to the baby. Traditional surrogacy is when the carrier, or surrogate, uses her own genetic material and is genetically related to the baby. Much harder emotionally, I would think.
Since D decided to do genetic testing on the embryos before they were transferred to me, he knows the sex of each embryo. He was testing for genetic disorders, to be clear, but they found sex too. He decided to start with a male embryo, so we know Surrobaby is a boy.Report
Ahhhh…now it’s more clear. Thanks for explaining. Very interesting.Report
In our house we have two competing philosophies:
1) Wife – The Holidays start at 6am on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Decorations should all be up by sunset of that day. By the time that Christmas arrives, the decorations and Christmas music have grown tiresome. I have (seriously) seen her taking decorations down on Christmas night.
2) Husband – The Holidays start on Dec 1. If the decorations are not up until the 10th, that’s cool because we leave them up until at least until New Year’s Day. All those cheesy Halmark movies I recorded are also valid to watch right up until the ball drops on NYE.Report
So its a conspiracy to get all the Flyte holiday secrets in one day?
1. Advent starts when Advent starts (on the first Sunday of Advent).
2. Advent Music!
3. Gaudete Sunday is Advent Tree Sunday!
4. Decorate Advent tree (white lights, purple ribbon, star… no ornaments)
5. Christmas Tunes start slipping out of confinement. Yeah, even unto the Crooner Mix.
6. Christmas Eve… convert Advent Tree into Christmas Tree, yay!
7. Pre-Mass meal… oysters and soup, yay!
8. Midnight Mass – Christmas Season begins!
9. Christmas Morning – Jammies, presents, and cinnamon rolls.
10. Christmas Sugar coma
11. Feb 4, creche comes down, Christmas Season ends. boo.Report
@marchmaine A fine set of traditions you have there. Not quite the same as mine, but I like them. (Christmas season is over after Old Christmas (January 6), for me. And we concurrently always started celebrating Christmas as part of Advent, though with gradual increasing creep much in the way you describe.. (And by we I mean not just my family, but their ancestors unto at least the 4th generation or so.))Report
@maribou Thanks, that’s kind of you to say. I’ve always been impressed how Canada seems to keep a piece of the old world tucked away where it doesn’t bother anyone; where American took it out back and burned it.
But you’re right, I should have said that the high Christmas feasting ends around Epiphany… though practically speaking we can barely keep it going through the Octave; then its really just a slow walk until Candlemas. Which is Latin for “put away the decorations already, no mas candles.”
The nice thing about Advent music and the Christmas music creep is that it sounds better when its anticipatory and hasn’t reached 100% saturation.Report
“Christmas Eve – convert Advent Tree into Christmas Tree”
I like that. I like having the tree up, but would probably prefer it if most of the time its decoration was a bit less busy.Report
Yeah, that was one of those compromises that really worked; its too hard to ignore the Christmas season when everything around you is saying Christmas… the simple tree with penitential purple (but sparkly lights!) at least reminds you that we’re still anticipating, not participating. Waiting until Gaudete Sunday is also really exciting… its always the 3rd Sunday of advent, but that means that some years (like this one) the tree goes up really early… but other years you are scrounging among the Charlie Brown trees for something that still has needles. Helps with pacing (especially with little kids).
More lizard man-ish than pure draconian.Report
That’s your Flyte schedule?Report
Yep, helps us to arrive before Rex his two friends and their gaudy gifts.Report
When you suddenly realize that you’re a draconian…I’m reduced to hoping that I’m at least a Bozak and not a Baaz.Report
@jaybird And then there’s your own wife’s rule, which is that Christmas celebrations start on the first Sunday of Advent…
Not that I mind squeezing back to the Friday instead of the Sunday…. twist my arm ;).Report
So, this weekend, I am going to go out and get groceries at the various stores around town and, officially, have no leg to stand on as I walk down the soup aisle and they’re playing “Jingle Bell Rock”.
Yeah, once the secular-christmas-pop-music-in-public season starts I feel like getting legless in self defence before I go into any stores too.
There is a Metalocalypse Christmas special, which I find it helpful to watch around mid December.Report
Three words. Trans. Siberian. Orchestra.
I knew the Dropkick Murphys had a Christmas song, but I’m surprised it took me until this year to discover that the Mighty Mighty Bosstones had done one too.Report
What’s on my docket this weekend? Oh, ya know. A little of this, a little of that. I need to get in some writing, and I’d like to catch up on some reading. I still haven’t seen Interstellar, so I think I might watch that. Drink lots of tea, because I’m still getting over my flu from hell. Going to a Ku Klux Klan rally and parade.
You know. Stuff.Report
If it’s the right kind of tea, have the first cup right at the beginning of Interstellar. It’ll kick in right around the time that you’ll really, really need it to.Report
So, um. Sneeze on some klansmen for us?
Really though, a klan rally? Wha?Report
You’ve heard of monster truck rallies, right? Now take away the trucks.Report
Well, more it’s more a Klan rally in theory than practice.
There are still a couple of hours of daylight so maybe it will happen. But it was scheduled for 9:00 this morning, and so far what we have is 75+ members of the press from all over the world, 200-300 anti-KKK protesters from all over the region, and exactly zero KKK parades, rallies, or members.Report
So much for this rule of thumb then, huh? 🙂Report
I think the rule of thumb still holds! Just think I ended up being a couple of decades late.Report
Is the legislature in session? In today’s North Carolina, that’s more or less a Klan rally.Report
No politics.Report
Ditch Interstellar. Watch Paprika instead.Report
As for my docket, there will be lots of tea, lots of working on Christmas presents, lots of warm fuzzy clothing (it snowed today! first one this year! FINALLY), lots of reading, and yes, Christmas music. (Now that it’s been nearly a decade since I last worked retail, I really enjoy the stuff again.) I’ll be out and about a bit on Sunday with the usual things (library, hanging out with Dman’s wife watching The Librarians), but mostly I plan to snuggle in.Report
I shop fairly rarely (I try to only go out once a week for fresh groceries) so I guess I haven’t noticed the Christmas creep in the stores that much. (Craft stores, yes, because if you’re gluing 10,000 sequins to a stocking for your grandkid, you probably need to start doing that as soon as the kid is conceived….).
That said, I always enjoy seeing what new toys are out there when the variety stores beef up their toy sections for the holidays. (We have ZERO dedicated toy stores within driving distance of me – our Toys R Us closed 10 years ago and is now an Aldi and a farm and home store)
I do remember the Walgreen’s a few years back when those tabletop-sized singing Christmas trees were a thing. They had one set up within eyesight/earshot of the checkout counter. I asked the person behind the counter (she had been a student of mine): “I bet you get sick of that. I’ve been in here fifteen minutes and I’m sick of it” She laughed and said, “You have NO idea.”
My own decorations are up, but I travel to visit family before Christmas, so if I’m gonna decorate, I might as well do it around Thanksgiving.
I like some of the music but not the pop-styled secular songs that most stores play. (I have a tiny game where I try to avoid hearing the full rendition of ‘All I want for Christmas is You” every year. So far this year I am winning).
I do like the older stuff (Bing Crosby, etc.) or the “church music” Christmas music and I start playing those at home a couple days into December.
It’s gonna be cold and cruddy here this weekend so I did my grocery shopping for the week this afternoon and will spend tomorrow grading. (At home, where I can make tea and control the house temperature).Report
I live in an apartment free of Christmas music and decorations.
I’m probably going to the Frank Stella exhibit this weekend.
http://deyoung.famsf.org/exhibitions/stella?gclid=CODT0pWR19ACFQdafgodtfcLkAReport
You know you might be a Jewish leftist when you hear “O, Christmas Tree” playing on a radio in a store and you start singing the Red Flag to yourself.
I’m going to a holiday market at Bohemisn Hall on Sunday.Report
I had a drill weekend with the reserve and got to praticipate in humvee roll over training, electronic weapons simulator, take a pt test and give my unit leadship a briefing on the army’s new transgender policy.Report
Did you seriously get to roll over a Humvee?
That sounds a lot more fun than a PC test on transgender policy.Report
The army has a trainer. It is a humvee body in a cradle that the trainer can rotate 360 degrees. The first secenario the trainer rolls you over 2-3 times and then leaves you upside down and expects you to get out. The second, they put you at 90 degrees and you climb out the gunner’s hatch. I was on the down side on the 90 degree and was afraid the other guy in the driver’s seat was going to land on me when he released his seat belt.Report
Do you also do the rollover training with an MRAP sim?Report
They do exist but I don’t know if there is one near our base. I talked with SPC who has done both. She said the MRAP is worse bc you fall farther when upside down. To add to the fun, they also have foam rubber ammo cans so you can simulate objects loose in the vehicle as it rolls.Report
The AI wrote me a Christmas Carol.
I’m Jewish.
As previously discussed, I hate Christmas Carols.
… I was still rolling on the floor laughing.
(I’d post lyrics, but no politics, ya?)Report