Broke out the winter coat last night for a trip to the movies and this little bit from Mystery Science Theater 3000 (a favorite show of mine) appeared on my mental remote control

Ain't that some shit

It's a Love Hate sort of thing, me and this holiday season, that is.

I guess it is such a dominating thing, that you can't help but think about what was. I always fret a little over doing the right amount for my kids. It always works out, but the self-inflicted stress over doing that and the imagined comparisons to the seeming magic tricks that my folks used to work annually for me and my siblings makes my head hurt sometimes.

Perhaps if it didn't try stealing Halloween's thunder on the shelves of Target and Wegmans (I'm sure there are others), Christmas wouldn't seem so looming. While I really would like to give the season the big old sloppy kiss it seems to command, a little pause comes. I sometimes get a little sad over the divorce and what those circumstances have done mostly to me, and how that makes you (well, me) pretty much everything. The demands of the office secret santa, the adopted family, the board functions, decorating for members, and the dreaded office party (I'm skippin) can make my chest feel tight sometimes. The office party--nothing like the parade of significant others to reinforce the sense of holiday bumhood. Dating life is picking up a bit, but not enough to subject anybody to the coworkers.

So, this isn't a currier and ives, rah, christmas post, but I'm still in favor of it, just have a bit of tom waits and bourbon where the unicorns and rainbows ought to be.

It really made me feel Thanksgiving got screwed in the holiday pecking order. I felt bad for the people who had to go report for work at 10:00 that night, because I'm pretty sure that if the stores opened for holiday shopping at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, people would still shop.

"We're hunting cwistmas twees....hehehe"

Well, enough Fudd-isms, as we no longer do such foolish things. But the day after Black Friday, before American Express sponsored it, used to be known as...Saturday. Quite the revelation, I know.

My older brother and our dad had taken to procuring a real honest-to-gosh Christmas tree for the folks' place on this mighty day. With the appearance of my lovely eldest daughter, I joined in the quest. When you have baby at home, suddenly tossing some lights on top of a six foot tall artificial plant that was there all the time, didn't seem to cut it. The boys had done their due diligence and found that Ulbrich's tree farm had a good selection of free range trees (A joke for those of who take shopping at the co-op too seriously). While the good folks at Ulbrichs had already had some on the lot already pre-cut and ready to be attached to your car, those were for the wimps, the candy-assed & generally inferior.

Okay, chances are those were also taken by the smarter people, but the real men, the hairy chested, not afraid of rear-wheel drive cars, drinkers in the good dive bars, went to get our own. Well, it was also cheaper to cut your own down as it saved the Ulbrichs folks from doing it. In our thriftiness, we also became snobs. That first one, that's a good one, but let's see what else is out there. My first escapade on this adventure had either my dad or I leaving a glove to mark a potentially worthy tree. From a distance it looked like the glove was giving us the finger. That system evolved as the old man made markers out of material, so we could TRACK the trees, as the good ones wouldn't stay where we left them.

The uniting factor in all this is that I think with one exception the weather was mostly crappy. It was raining one year and even the staff was looking at us like we were nuts, which truth be told, we probably were. Either rain, snow, or ground that mostly resembled walking on a fudge sundae, it was never ideal, but you came away with the right tree from the space. I don't think it mattered much to my kids where the tree came from, but it was an all too rare window in my brother's soul. He battles a variety of issues, but can tell you about each jaunt in remarkable detail, even though we stopped some years ago.

That is what I take away, when I read about people tsk-tsk-ing about the midnight shoppers Thursday night, or self-righteously shopping local because a credit card company told them too, I tend to think more about this kind of silly stuff. There wasn't a year that we didn't look like the Keystone Kops heading into the woods of Alden, and that was pretty cool.

That said, shop the local shops at the damn time, the Black Friday deals are marketing (as they pop up again and again, during the year and the season) and cyber monday? Click on the "watch" buttons and you don't have to do things because some smarmy marketer told you so. I say this as one of those smarmy marketers.

I mean seriously, I know some bars were opening back up Thanksgiving Night and all, but can you imagine being the guy who has to leave dinner to put his stuff on to head off for the 10 pm shift at Target?

There is a reason that people like Thanksgiving more so than Christmas, less constant pressure. This occurred to me, thinking of the poor devil who actually had the misfortune to need an essential, underwear, or whatever at the closest Target.

I mean, I understand, Friday is a day off for most folks and it's the season and all that, Remember when the season started at the civilized hour of, say, 10? There wasn't anything wrong with that. The bulk of the "incredible" deals often resurface during the season and even during the "mystery days" of Christmas, you know, that space between Christmas and New Year's.

I guess this all stems from me seeing the inevitable news piece of some poor slob who had to line up at 2 in the morning for the deal on a flat screen at some big box retailer, only to stumble and get trampled the moment the doors open. Nobody needs a new set so badly that they need to risk safety and regard for other people that way.

And I think that is at the heart of it for me. Christmas and I have had a love hate relationship over the past few years, mostly from my own odd belief that I wasn't able to do all that I wanted for my kids only to find out we were doing fine all along. Yet, the season actually is a "Season" with displays creeping into the Halloween racks at some retailers last month, before Halloween.

It is the one time frame where people generally act the way they should all year long, provided you aren't seeing them in a retail setting.

You want to embrace it, but it can sometimes be too big to get your arms around.