Celebrating the Seasons

I’ve always disliked complaints about Valentine’s Day. “It’s a Hallmark Holiday! It’s manufactured!” and the like. My attitude has always been, “Well, if you’re weak enough to fall for the marketing, and can’t just enjoy the day, that’s on you!” But upon recent reflection, I think these protesters may have a point, and it’s this: obsessive marketing to sell stuff is blurring the lines between what a holiday means and what we must buy for it, leaving the innate simple pleasures of the seasons to die on the vine, while we’re systematically subjected to anxiety-inducing campaigns that are geared towards only one thing: separating us from our money. And now it’s happening for every single holiday.

The tradition of the Christmas tree used to be to put it up and decorated it as a family on Christmas Eve. Now our Christmas tree isle is back to back with the Halloween costumes, and our trees are up before Thanksgiving.

Even the marketing itself is getting earlier. The traditional big shopping day of Black Friday is now on Thanksgiving Day itself! And “smaller” holidays, like Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day, are for white sales and barbeques (sadly, most people don’t even stop to think about the significant difference between these two days, if they even stop to think about them at all).

My point here is that we are being robbed of the enjoyment of delighting in the seasons as they come, and forced through anxiety to constantly be thinking ahead instead of enjoying the moment.

As you likely know, I love “stuff”…I’m in the stuff business! But I’m nostalgic, and miss the simple things that came with the changing seasons, that thrilled me as a child, and fear these little delights are being chipped away, piece by piece, but something as petty and predictable as marketing.

On Halloween night, I let some of these feelings of dread in. When we walked through the door from a fun night of trick-or-treating and hanging out with neighbors, my first thought wasn’t to reflect on the festivities or leisurely make a cup of tea while taking it all in. My first thought was, “I need to put away all of this Halloween stuff! What do I do next? Take out the Christmas stuff? Oh Christmas! It’s just around the corner!”

If you’ve read past posts (and you have, of course, haven’t you?) You’ll know I see everyday as a chance to recalibrate (why wait till Monday, or the first of the month, or the first of the year?) so today I’m doing just that. The weather is cool, so I’ll make some spiced cider and maybe let an old movie play while I’m fixing dinner tonight…I’ll make something warm…something that smells like Autumn! I’ll focus on the joys of this season, and let the anxieties around me fall away while I revel in what I love about this season. And, just as important, I’m going to talk to my child about things I love about fall.

In the coming days we can talk about the Pilgrims, what Thanksgiving means, and maybe recreate The Nina, Pinta, and the Santa Maria out of construction paper and popsicle sticks, like I did when I was a kid. The push back will be hard…I have errands to run today and will see all of the Christmas stuff (and possibly even Valentine hearts; nothing would surprise me at this point!) but when I do, I’ll make an effort to not let the panic-ridden marketing in, and to look around and let in the things of this current season that I love. Join me in this little exercise? I’ll bet we’ll both be better off, mentally (and financially!).