It's already happening... It happens every single year about this time... I'm not suprised by it but it does bother the heck out of me... The thing I am refering to has, in recent years, pushed me to dislike Christmas. I complained about Christmas so much one year that my Mom-in-law gave me a Grinch neck tie as a joke. I have come back to liking Christmas since then, but I still have some major problems with some people and their love of this holiday.

Don't stop reading now. Don't send me hate mail or negative comments telling me that I hate baby Jesus. I don't want you to assume that I am anti-family, anti-giving, anti-presents etc. Please hear me out.

I'll spare you the long story about my childhood, a tanish station-wagon and long nights driving through neighbourhoods looking at Christmas lights with my family. I love my family, I just hate Christmas lights. I think I'd rather chew on a broken bottle or maybe try to swallow the jagged shards of a chicken bone... I don't know if my past has anything to do with my dislike of the currently popular pre-Christmas festivities. It might. Either way, I have problems.

I don't like Christmas lights being put out during October or 80% of November. They don't belong. They are freaking CHRISTMAS lights. I don't like it when people begin displaying their fully decorated Christmas Tree before Thanksgiving. I want to destroy things when I hear dorky Christmas music playing in the mall before December 1. Please, if you are a Christmas enjoyer, by all means, live it up! Shop till you drop, decorate your house, wear your favorite puff-paint Christmas sweatshirt every day as long as it is December. On the flip side, most of us don't leave out our Christmas stuff until Feruary...do we? If you do, please put it up around New Years or so.

Dear Christmas over lover, by the time Christmas gets here I'm usually already tired of it. You have made me tired of it because you skipped over Thanksgiving. Because you sang your stupid Amy Grant Christmas album over and over and over. Because you talk about things like Christmas cheer and then you turn around and return all of your Christmas gifts because you would rather have gotten something else.

I think my main problem is that most people completely skip over a time of "giving thanks", being grateful and acknowledging our blessings to get to a time of over spending, over wanting and over doing. We might all enjoy Christmas a little more if we went into that season after coming out of a time of being thankful. We all have so much already and most of us don't think twice about where or who what we have came from because we are already focusing on getting more.

I like the Charlie Brown Christmas special. In it, I think Linus says that Christmas has become "over commercialized". I agree with you Linus. That is a good observation for a kid who carries a blanket, sucks his thumb and has a huge dent in his head.

If you are planning on pulling out the Christmas decor soon, I would ask you to rethink. Wait until after Thanksgiving. Go into celebrating the birth of Christ on the heals of Thanksgiving. Give it a try. I think you'll like it.