It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like a Crisis

November is here, bringing with it crunchy leaf fragments embedded in my carpet, BloPo Month, and visions of sugarplums dancing in my head. I'm traditionally anti-autumn for a number of reasons that I won't enumerate here for fear of sounding maudlin; and my defense against coping with the lowered temperatures, shorter days, and withered lawns of November is to pull out the Christmas decorations as soon as Halloween is over (sometimes before, if I can sneak them past Aaron) and elf it up. I prefer to remain firmly in denial about this whole mid-to-late-fall period and dive antlers-first into the mistletoe and goodwill towards men of December; this way I can stave off the seasonal blahs until the tree comes down in January and I'm faced with the reality that I'll still have to cope with months of frost, slush, and pink Valentine hearts before we'll see the sun again.

In keeping with this tradition, I've been playing Christmas music since early October; and I've been looking forward to today as the day to fling open the attic doors and release the legions of reindeer, snowmen, holly berries, and jolly old elves to reclaim their rightful places of honor on shelves, tables, walls, and the rest of my house.

But something's wrong this year. Maybe it's the meds, but for the first time in ages, I'm enjoying the fall. I've been catching myeslf gawking at blaze-colored dead leaves, breathlessly waiting for enough to fall that I can rake piles in the yard for the kids to jump into. I'm finding creative ways to cook with pumpkin and drinking gallons of apple cider. I walk outside and take in lungfuls of chilly, fragrant air. I even have autumnal decorations up in my house, and I like them. This more than anything is causing problems for my inner elf: If my house is already strewn with pumpkins and turkeys, where am I going to put all my Christmas decorations? Can the two seasons coexist, or would cross-decorating give rise to some sort of turf war, splattering my once-peaceful living room with tufts of reindeer fur and pumpkin seeds? Can a house divided against itself hope to stand?

So for the first time in my adult life, it looks like I'm actually choosing to delay putting up my Christmas decorations until a bit later than usual. I may not make it until the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade officially hands the season over to Santa, but I'll at least be holding off a bit longer. At least for today.