Christmas Comes Early ‘Round Here

Would you be disgusted with the rabid state of consumerism in America if I were to tell you that a store I went to this weekend was already totally decked out for Christmas–trimmed trees, stocking stuffer point-of-sale bins, and carols blaring in the elevators? In September?!

Well, thankfully, I didn’t enter any such store. That would have just been ridiculous.(Though I’m sure there are some teddy bear laden trees already lurking in the basement at Macy’s.)

For an untimely hit of holiday spirit, I actually had to go no further than, well, my own house. And despite myself, I think I’m the one who brought it on.

You see, whenever we manage to find a children’s book author whose stories when read hundreds upon hundreds of times over don’t make Mark and I want to go on a wild book-burning spree,
I go onto Amazon and buy out everything that author has written. I mean, if one of his or her books has managed to totally unsuck, my assumption is the others may have their merits too.

We’re on an Arnold Loebel kick right now. He wrote these Frog and Toad books in the 70s, which aren’t much in terms of illustrative eye candy, but are sweet stories written in a quirky enough manner to entertain Mark and I. (The one about them not being able to stop eating cookies just slays us. As does Toad’s frequent depressive exclamation, “Blah.”)

The other children’s book rut we’re currently in is the Olivia books–introduced to us this summer by Daryl and Christian’s kids.

So on Saturday, along with a couple other things, Olivia Helps with Christmas arrived in the mail. Telling Kate we were going to put it away until a more seasonally appropriate time would have been like making her a huge hot fudge sundae, setting it on the table, then saying, “Oh, this isn’t to eat now.”

At this point, the entire family has nearly committed the book to memory.

And by the time I got up from my weekend-day-to-sleep-in on Sunday, Kate had apparently done some dumpster-diving in my orange childhood toy box. That’s where we keep toys we’ve gotten as gifts that scare Kate (or us), like the animatronic Tickle Me Elmo, unwieldy games we don’t need in constant rotation, and out-of-season holiday-themed books.

So, groggy from the decadence of what might actually have been too much sleep, I stumbled over that scratch and sniff book about Bear’s smelly Christmas on the floor of the white bathroom. We’ve since read, scratched, and sniffed it several dozen times. 

And late Sunday afternoon I walked by the living room to see Mark reading an enraptured Kate The Night Before Christmas. It was very sweet, but at some point soon I’m hoping I can sneak all the Santa stuff away for a while.

I don’t want to be a buzzkill about it. I mean, I like seeing a kid in his Spiderman costume in April as much as the next guy. I’m just not sure we can maintain the magic of Christmas around here for the next few months. And it would be such a shame to lose momentum around about mid-December.