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Christmas just fires up too darned early for me.

Christmas needs to hold off and let Halloween and Thanksgiving enjoy their own short-lived scenes in the spotlight.

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday of the year and it just doesn’t get the respect it deserves because ole Father Christmas is always poking his head in and stealing away time and attention. Many retailers and some citizens seem to decorate for Christmas before the Thanksgiving turkey even grows cold.

Call me a Scrooge or the Grinch who stole Christmas, but it is difficult for me to get excited for Christmas until about one week before it arrives. That is probably too extreme on the other side, but that is how I was raised.

We always used a live tree and we didn’t put it up until one week before Christmas. Then, it stayed up until the day after New Years, or in some cases until January 6, the date of Epiphany in the Christian calendar.

The preparations for Christmas coming so early just prolong the stress of the season for me—with all the preparation, parties and places to go. It is so exhausting, and somehow I feel the true meaning and substance of Christmas gets lost in needless folderol.

Okay! Enough! Having said all that, I will take a step back and make a suggestion that will seem like a complete reversal of my beliefs.

I think it is nice the City of Bainbridge puts up a light display along the river each year. It opens to the public on December 1. I would like to suggest it should be open Thanksgiving weekend, and here is why. We had family members come for Thanksgiving this year and they had seen the signs put up by the City announcing the Lights along the River. They suggested we all go see them on Friday evening. That would have been a nice thing to do together and would create a fond memory; but alas, I had to inform them it didn’t open until Sunday, December 1st. That was after our guests had gone home.

There must have been many visitors in our community over Thanksgiving that would have liked to see the lights. It would have given them a special memory of the time they spent in Bainbridge. Checking with a couple other communities, I found they do indeed have their Christmas light attractions operational on Thanksgiving weekend.

Just something to think about.