When should I celebrate Christmas? And when do I stop?

If I go by the retailers, it starts the day after Halloween, and most big box retailers set their displays a month before that.

 

Radio? Well, one year it's the day after Halloween. another year it's a week after. Some go 24/7, some sprinkle a little cheer here and there.

TV? Thanksgiving day, unless you’re a cable shopping channel, in which case you start in July.

And when do I stop?

Christmas starts in deafening fits, but ends with a nearly unanimous jarring silence at midnight Christmas Day.

I'm trying to figure out why this bothers me.

(Once I discover a nagging mental splinter like this, I try to analyze why and what triggers it. This is no mean feat, it takes considerable effort and sometimes unearths buried anxieties.)

I think in this case, there are a few reasons:

1. Christmas isn't something you turn on and off, as Scrooge discovered; Christmas is something you keep all year.

2. Too much of anything is a bad thing, and that goes for peppermint and tinsel as much as anything else.

3. When something becomes an excuse to make money, it is then no more than that. I may as well celebrate freeway tolls.

4.  Everyone pretends Christmas is something that it isn’t.

5. I don’t want it to end.

6. I get the feeling everyone was having a party but really didn’t want to be there.

[2013-12-31]

c0

Many year ago I had this constant recurring thought: “I wish someone would give me $20.” I had no idea where this was coming from. It wasn’t a voice, just a constant intrusion into unrelated activities. I don’t remember now what precisely was triggering it, but when I took a moment to analyze it, I discovered an event I was repressing. As soon as I uncovered it, the intrusions stopped.

I’m not a psychoanalyst, but I’ve repeated this process many times. Perhaps that is what keeps me sane, or maybe I am only staving off insanity.

[2014-01-04]

c0