These Christmas decorations - and more - are still in our garage……for now.

(Sunday Paper, Year V, Issue 45)

I have very strict rules about when it is or isn’t OK to start in with the Christmas stuff.

So strict that the other day, when I sat at the piano to mess around and starting doing the first few bars of Bruce Springsteen’s “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town,” my daughter yelled at me.

“What are you doing?” she shouted. “You’re breaking your own rule!”

She wasn’t wrong.

It was barely even November, let alone after Thanksgiving.

But in 2020, the year where so much has gone out the window, I think this is a rule worth bending.

The rules are as follows:

Even though there’s probably a radio station playing Christmas music around the clock right now, I won’t start listening to it until after Thanksgiving. Maybe even December 1st.

No Christmas decorations until the weekend after Thanksgiving.

The Christmas season isn’t ushered in until we’ve properly celebrated Thanksgiving. (I really like Thanksgiving.)

But we’ve already broken some norms this year.

And some of it started with the taking down of Christmas decorations in the winter - I’ve told you often about the “Family” ornaments I collect, in which we’ve put pictures of our family every year (except one) since 2006. I usually leave that up a little longer than the rest of the decorations (along with the Christmas cards), and this year after I took down the Christmas cards in March I decided to leave that out. So it’s been up year-round, because I like seeing it and when things went sideways in March it brought me joy.

That’s how I’m feeling now. This week, with the election, was an anxious week. This year, with everything else, has been an anxious year.

I like putting out the Christmas decorations. (Maybe I should invest in some Thanksgiving decorations and that would solve the problem we’re talking about here.)

Christmas time usually brings me calm and joy.

If we need to start a little early this year, so be it.

Because calm and joy have been in short supply for far too long.

Notes

*I hope this post applies to those of you who don’t celebrate Christmas as much as it does those of us who do. I think the sentiment is pretty universal.

*If I had been asked last week, I would have guessed the Christmas song from which the title of this post borrows was original to the Hanna-Barbera Christmas special, which I assumed was created some time in the 1960s. But, FACT CHECK - I don’t think there was a general Hanna-Barbera Christmas special - I think I’m thinking of the Yogi Bear Christmas special, which is from 1980. And it turns out “We Need A Little Christmas” dates back to the 1960s (according to Wikipedia) and is from the Broadway musical ‘Mame’. And, get this, the idea behind the song is that ‘we need a little Christmas’ to get through a tough time - the stock market crash of 1929. I don’t know much about the musical - I think we’re talking different economic status here - but this is exactly what I’m talking about. This post is pretty much a Broadway musical, is what I’m saying.

*For more such insight, you can follow me on Twitter or Like the John Sucich page on Facebook.

*I will definitely do some more promo in the coming weeks, but Matt Sucich has some new music coming out, with a new single already released called “See You Soon.” I can’t recommend highly enough that you get into his music. You can find all of the relevant links by visiting his website.

*One thing I failed to mention last week when talking about planners and calendars…and is still relevant this week talking about Christmas: It’s insane how close we are to the end of the year. I keep track through things like the holidays, of course - Halloween followed by Thanksgiving followed by Christmas - but also the Sunday Paper, as I think I mentioned a few weeks back. The fact that this is “Issue 45” means it’s Week 45 of the year, so just 7 or so Sunday Papers left in 2020. And I need to get my act together about the end-of-year posts - including the newly introduced (last year) “What I’ve Read” and a new entry for this year, which I’ll tell you about soon. I’ll have to think about whether I will do a ‘Goals for the New Year’ post….not sure what’s realistic in this current state.

*Oh, another indication of time passing is this: It’s caramel brûlée season again at Starbucks. I drink too many of these each holiday season…and this year, for what I think is the first time, we got one one the first day they were available. (Because the girls lobbied successfully for hot chocolate on Friday to get a free Starbucks holiday cup.) I had a 2/3 decaf one…but it still wasn’t enough to disrupt my sleep.

*And maybe another way to tell the passage of time will be by the weight I will inevitably put on from the caramel brûlée lattes.