Annual 12 Days of Christmas Vent
I might not have complained about it here, but I DO complain about this annually - and that's the ignorance of radio stations, media and stores who seem to think that the 12 days of Christmas are the days leading up to Christmas. Not so. It's the 12 days between Christmas and Ephiphany (January 6th), the day the Magi arrived. In olden and not so olden days (when she was growing up in the 30s and 40s, my mother's family celebrated this way) it was the custom to go to church on Christmas Day and then exchange gifts on either 12th Night or on January 6th. This is still prevalent in many cultures, but here in the U.S. it was still being done as late as the 1940s.

In short, it's not even Christmas yet. It won't be Christmas until Christmas Day. It is the Christmas Season, or the Holidays, if you want to include Channukah, but Christmas isn't yet here - despite what the retailers want us to think. And the greeting card companies. And the Christian right-wingers who think that you're condemning them to Hell if you utter anything BUT Merry Christmas to them right now.

So, to all the people who put up their decorations and trees the day after Thanksgiving and then take them down before the end of the year - boo on you! You're missing out on the true Christmas season and bowing down at the altar of retailers everywhere who've got you conned into believing that Christmas starts with Thanksgiving Day. And while I'm not so much of a purist as to ignore Christmas since it's based on pagan customs and even the day itself was a pagan day of celebration, and I don't put up my tree or decorations on Christmas Eve, I do have a problem with putting things up and out on Thanksgiving Day itself - most especially when firstly, if you're using a live tree, then you've really got a fire hazard by Christmas Day, and secondly, if you take everything down before January 6th, then you're missing out on the majority of the Christmas Season itself.

End of rant.