I went to the mall with my daughter the weekend after Halloween. Not only were they already putting up Christmas decorations, banners, trees, ornaments the size of my house, (and not a picture of Jesus to be seen…), but there was already the Christmas mood music playing in the background.

Now look, I’m mad about Christmas. Not mad as in unhappy, but as in I go completely nuts. I would, without question, coat my house in lights like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and have a sad tendency to binge watch every Christmas movie ever made all month long. I listen to jazzy Christmas albums and wear a Santa hat. Really, I’m all in.

Look, I get it, we should be celebrating Advent then. It’s supposed to have a penitential character. While I’ve never believed in the adage, “If you can’t beat em, join em!”, there is a beauty in celebrating the most important reality of our world, that God Himself would become a Man out of love for us, with others who at least tacitly believe the same, however imperfectly. So I’m cool with singing Christmas songs on my way to confession, and drinking egg nog while reading about John the Baptist.

But it’s not Advent. Not even close. The spooky decorations from Halloween haven’t even come down, and kids are still on a sugar high from their hoard. This is stupid. 

No, really, this is soul sucking stupid. I LOVE Christmas. By the time the season actually gets here, I will be sick of it. That should not ever happen. We should always feel reluctant to take down the decorations at Epiphany. (Yes, Epiphany, not before Christmas dinner!) Instead, if I even turn on the radio or go shopping, I am already bombarded.

Happy Holidays takes on a new meaning in this idiocy. It used to mean, “We don’t want to talk about Jesus, but we like presents.” Now it means, “We want to suck all the joy out of your celebration and make you so sick of it that you will hate it.”

Personally, I am choosing to put on my blinders. I am ignoring all mention of Christmas, pretending I’m color blind and can’t tell the difference between red and green, refusing to listen to Christmas Music and generally refusing anything Christmas. MY Christmas will be awesome, but I’m waiting for it. I think I would have capitulated in the 50’s when we Catholics and the rest of society had at least some commonality. That commonality is gone, and there is nothing we share with our current “Happy Holidays” culture.

More than that. I have taken mental note, and decided anyone who has decorated before Thanksgiving will receive NO “Christmas business” from me this year. I’m done with this nonsense. I’m taking the “commercial” out of MY Christmas. To be honest, I’m looking at how I can spend $0 for Christmas entirely.

Really, I’m that sick of this.

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