Signs of the Season

Every year, they appear earlier and earlier. The decorations at the State Street stores were up before Halloween this year, and now that November has actually arrived, so has Christmas. The trumpets and wreaths are up at Fields. (This is the last year for the famed ritzy megamall, it will be replaced in 2006 by a differently-named megamall, which has my mom all weepy for the good old days.) Next week they'll unveil the Last Fields Christmas Windows. Holiday-themed commercials, featuring elves and trees and families gathered in their pajamas, are all over TV. My Christmas list is halfway complete, the usual suspects (that's you, Mom) still have blanks after their names, and this year I have the challenge of buying a present for a whole new difficult boy. Not to mention between now and then I have the world's greatest Thanksgiving Part II party to host and about a thousand impossible-to-meet deadlines at work.

That's maybe the clearest sign of the holiday season. The crushing stress whenever you have time to think of all you have to do (say, on the morning train or while cooking dinner). I shall rely, again, on spiked hot chocolate and the fact that I get two extra holidays from work this time around.