THERE IS TOO MUCH CHRISTMAS TO CRAM INTO A MONTH

Rarely does December strike you just two days after Thanksgiving. This year Christmas was even harder to restrain than usual through the Thanksgiving holiday.

I've never been an early Christmas shopper. And I have secretly despised those who completed Christmas shopping before December. There is just something unseemly about rushing things, riding roughshod over Thanksgiving in the pursuit of some orderly, polite, organized Christmas.

In fact, until this year I have considered an unorganized, spontaneous Christmas to be mandatory. Organizing Christmas is like trying to organize a thunderstorm.

Shop early, plan well, address Christmas cards in October --- and there will still be nights when a recital suddenly appears on the calendar without warning, an unexpected friend drops by just when you are supposed to be baking bars for a program, or you suddenly remember that you are responsible for a relish tray and all you have on hand are radishes. Your child gets an ear infection, the car's radiator overheats, the ninth life of your cat expires.

But people still try to corral Christmas.

In early November I made the mistake of glancing at a calendar and saw the narrow window between Thanksgiving and Christmas. So I became one of those people I disdained, making Christmas purchases before Thanksgiving.

The trouble is, there are just too many good things about Christmas to cram into a month's time. I like Christmas too much to miss any of it.

If I have to shop after Thanksgiving, then I won't be home addressing cards while the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings Carol of the Bells or the Chipmunks chirp out Christmas, Don't Be Late.

I can't give up Christmas baking just to shop! I want to try those cranberry-macadamia triangles I saw in a magazine. It's utterly important that I make several batches of my traditional English toffee, too.

The kids would mutiny if I didn't roll out sugar cookies and let them lick the bowl. If Christmas lasted three months, I'd bake goodie plates for every neighbor, every teacher, every acquaintance. I always intend to do more, but I usually end up with a couple batches of toffee and some pretty unattractive frosted camels.

We have to have at least a couple nights of carol singing. If you can't sing the old carols, Christmas just isn't Christmas. It's winter holiday. What is Christmas without singing God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen or Angels We Have Heard on High?

With a condensed Christmas, I could forget the tree, I suppose, but what would I do without the school-made ornaments with first-grade faces surrounded by red and green yarn? Those have become essential.

I suppose we could tell Grandma to stay home, not to come, smiling, with all the latest news. It would save time, not to bustle about, running up and down stairs, excitedly preparing her room.

Could we keep the creche unopened maybe?

Could we skip advent, forget the candles and the prayers, the songs and the scripture? Forgo the flickering child faces peering into the mysteries of Christmas, half in dark, half in light?

Would we give up church services that nail down the central Christmas message, that a Savior-God humbled Himself and became a small, human package, made flesh and living among us?

Never.

We would not cross off the solemn silences of congregational meditation or the ear-splitting, earth-cracking strains of Joy to the World, shoulder to shoulder with fellow children of Hope.

And we couldn't disregard that miraculous storm, the Eternal descending with the turbulence of angel wings onto the earth at midnight, uprooting an old world with an infant cry.

Just to get to the stores on time.

So I'll forget the shopping instead, or even, like this year, do it early. There is too much to miss any other way.

Donna Marmorstein All rights reserved 2002