In the late afternoon on Tuesday I had to run into Sam’s Club to grab a few things and there they were…..Christmas items.
Cookies, decorations and even Fruit Cakes.
It is never too early for a fruit cake. They have a long shelf life and are incredibly dense making great door stops.
I stopped and realized that it was OCTOBER 20 — not November 20. Although Monday morning was the first frost, by Tuesday it was nearly 70 degrees, way too nice to be thinking about Christmas.
Christmas displays before Halloween? What ever happened to Thanksgiving?
It is a sign of the times. The Candy Corn showed up on store shelves in August. Two years ago, I went to Target to buy the big box of freeze pops in early August and was told they did not carry freeze pops after July as they were stocking the shelves for fall.
So much for living in the moment; consumerism is as un-Zen as it gets.
Recently I was having a conversation with a friend who is my age. We talked about our younger days doing odd jobs or cutting the grass of older neighbors. I made $8 to cut the grass for Mr. and Mrs. Key down the street while my friend made $8 cutting the Rileys’ grass.
That was good money in those days; enough to go to a record store like Arboria or City Lights and get the latest album from a band we really liked. Occasionally the store would be sold out and then you’d have to wait a week until the next batch arrived. You learned patience.
Now you hit a button and any album can be downloaded to your mobile device…it is easier but shopping for music has really lost its charm, and a sense of community. I don’t know how many times I spent part of an afternoon in City Lights Record Store looking through used records or CDs while the owner Greg played a new album that he thought his customers might like.
As time moves forward technology changes everything.
Technology breeds and feeds our impatience. Music, Books, Newspapers (on-line that is) and information are all available immediately. In my first years coaching at Penn State, friends in Michigan or Ohio faxed me the articles from the day’s newspapers during game weeks to read what was being said by the opponents.
Now it is available almost in real time—within minutes of being uttered.
Maybe it is a better world, maybe not.
But I do know that if we’re not careful the impatient consumer push for the next holiday erases some of the excitement of the current season. Thanksgiving is sitting between these two holidays wondering how it got lost in the shuffle. Don’t even get me started on the stores that can’t wait for Black Friday to start their sales and will actually open on Thanksgiving Day.
Maybe these thoughts are a sign of getting older. Maybe it is human nature to want to hold time still, so I make an effort to get into the woods, or Millbrook Marsh, or walk the banks of a creek to note my surroundings and see the daily subtle changes. Nature has its own calendar, one driven by the forces of the universe.
You see it in a backyard garden. The last of the cucumbers are done—the first hard frost saw to that. The basil is done yet there is a tomato plant or two still holding out for me. The laws of nature refuse to yield to focus groups and marketers.
Next week for Halloween take time to be in the moment.
Spend Trick or Treat night listening to the excited chatter of the neighborhood kids going up and down the street. At my house I’ll answer the door while my dog barks at the kids coming up the walk. They’ll arrive at the door with smiling faces, often rosy cheeked from the autumn chill. They’ll smile and say thank you. Those are golden moments to cherish before life rushes us to the next thing.
Days and weeks pass quickly rocketing us into the future, it is so important to absorb that which is happening to us in real time.
This year I received a reminder of that in front of my house. Last fall as the pumpkins from last year got old I put one of them behind a bush in my front yard. This summer while weeding I noticed a familiar “weed” growing and realized it was a pumpkin vine starting from the discarded pumpkin’s seeds last fall.
A happy accident produced the pumpkins in front of our house–their growth a reminder that memories sprout roots to grow and remain in our mind.
It was a reminder amid the pressures of a consumer-driven world where we move to the next big thing before the last next big thing is even over, it’s important to stop and smell the pumpkins. After all once Pumpkin Spice season is gone it won’t be here again until just before next year’s Labor Day.
