'tis the season...

I love the Holidays. I especially love Christmas, but I refuse to acknowledge the onset of Christmas, until Thanksgiving is officially over. I feel like it's important to celebrate each Holiday to it's fullest, and to not cut one short for the excitement and anticipation of another. One of the things I loved most about working at Nordstrom was walking in the day after Thanksgiving, to find the store adorned and ornamented, embellished and trimmed...everything screaming It's Christmas! I love that unlike other retailers (that have Christmas stuff up at Halloween), Nordstrom waits until the day after Thanksgiving to unveil it's holiday decor, also feeling the importance of celebrating one holiday at a time.
I can actually remember one year convincing my mom that we should put up the tree before Thanksgiving. It was the year that we had found out about her cancer. Because the chemotherapy had caused her to be so sick and weak, we were unable to host Thanksgiving dinner as we had in years past. Due to the fact that we wouldn't be having any company over, we decided to go ahead and break out the Christmas stuff early. That was the Christmas mom died. I'm not sure if that's the reason I'm so adamant about waiting, or if it's because it's just part of longstanding tradition, but I think I will always wait until Thanksgiving has passed to welcome the commencement of Christmas...