Holiday haste syndrome ruins Christmas

If I hear another person complain that stores put up Christmas displays too early, I’ll scream. It’s not the stores’ fault thatChristmas cards and wrapping paper make an appearance next to spiral notebooks and colored pencils at August back-to-school sales.

A certain shopper mentality drives stores to rush Christmas through Halloween and Thanksgiving. It’s holiday haste syndrome that does it.

This disorder causes shoppers to order gifts in summer, to buy ornaments a year ahead and array them neatly in specially manufactured ornament boxes.

Victims of holiday haste syndrome have dinner menus planned months in advance. Their Christmas cards -- purchased at last year’s closeout sales in January -- are addressed and stamped by Halloween. They spend hours on Christmas Eve searching for all the wrapped and ready presents they bought in June and tucked away safely.

They shop online with credit cards, never needing to touch, wrap or even see the gifts they send to loved ones.

If holiday haste syndrome simply allowed shoppers to get all the peripheral stuff out of the way so they could focus on the more meaningful elements of the season, fine. But it often seems like the point in all this early activity is to nullify Christmas altogether.

Christmas is a drag, such a burden, such a chore. Let’s deal with it now so we won’t have to think about it later. That’s the attitude projected by holiday haste shoppers.

I should listen to all my favorite Christmas carol albums in September so I won’t have to bother with them at the end of December. /

You can organize and schedule and plan all the fun and magic outof Christmas. One well-intentioned advent expert suggests prioritizing Christmas events as a way to get a handle on the holiday. But somehow,sitting down and methodically listing and checking off activities would seem the surest way to sap all the fun and meaning from Christmas.

The best way to enjoy Christmas is just to let it happen. If you like making cookie plates for neighbors and co-workers, great – do it. If not, don’t sweat it. If you love glitter and glue guns, go ahead and make that pine cone, ribbon, foam ball monstrosity, but don’t let magazines, friends or commercials pressure you into it.

Nothing helps you prioritize Christmas better than putting everything off to the last minute. Everything, of course, means shopping. The best Christmas memories are formed by seasons of peace, punctuated at the end by a day or two of panic. A little late December adrenaline does wonders for the Christmas spirit.