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As I drove home last night, I witnessed the first Christmas decorations of the year. Nothing too fancy - a porch outlined in multi-colored lights, a wicker light-up deer, and a big inflatable Santa in the front yard. OK, so it was a little ugly. And for a brief moment I started to panic, thinking to myself, "Wait, we have no decorations up yet! Where are our decorations?"

Then my senses came back to me, and I reminded myself that we are still over a week away from Thanksgiving. There is no rush, no need to yank the boxes out of the garage and start madly whipping out the strands of lights.

Why do people feel the need to decorate so early? Is it really necessary to draw out the Christmas season over almost two months? We're still closer to Halloween than we are to Christmas at this point. And what about Thanksgiving, anyway? It seems to be a second-class holiday now. My theory is that Thanksgiving has little consumerism associated with it - after all, no gifts to buy - and so retailers have quietly brushed it under the rug and forced us to focus ahead on Christmas. Marketing would rather us focus on a holiday where cash is spent than on one where we all reflect on what we have instead of buying more.

As a child, Christmas was not even mentioned in our house until after Thanksgiving. There was to be no talk of what gifts I wanted, no asking about buying a tree, and definitely no asking to hang up the stockings yet. It's not that I'd be punished if I tried to talk about these things - it's just that anytime I brought the topic up, I was ignored and the topic was quickly changed.

The weekend after Thanksgiving, the great Christmas doors swung open and I was free to bring on the holiday spirit. My mom would take me out to find a tree (real, of course!), we'd spend all day Sunday decorating it, and I would write my first Christmas wish list. My mom was always so busy as a single mom that we rarely got to do things together as a family, but she always made time to decorate the house for Christmas.

Cordy is just starting to understand holidays. After her birthday earlier this year, she understands that occasionally people will give you gifts, and it can be fun to open them. Halloween taught her that it can be fun to decorate the house with a theme, and again taught her that people can be nice and give you things. So now as I try to explain Christmas to her, I can see the wheels turning in her head. I get presents and sparkly lights? Where can I sign up?

I've only told her a little about Christmas. Just like my childhood, we're holding off until after Thanksgiving. Then I plan to really build up the expectations and excitement as we transform our house into one filled with twinkly lights and garland and red bows. I hope that she'll be just as excited as I was as a child, and maybe we can begin a tradition of breaking out the Christmas boxes and decorating the house together as a family.


Find more stories and tips for the holidays at Family.com's Yule Blog