Beginning to Look Like Christmas

Saying I love Christmas might be the world's biggest understatement. Here's how much I love Christmas.

1. One time my sister, Laura and I jammed out to Christmas music when we were riding in the car. It was July.
2. The day after Christmas is one of the saddest days of the year for me because I know I have 364 days until I can celebrate it again. I am seriously bummed out.
3. One time, my friend, Krista, and I had a sleepover downstairs by the Christmas tree when we were roomies. It was awesome. We kept the tree lights on all night.
4. Krista and I would also decorate the week before Thanksgiving because we wanted to get ample enjoyment from the decorations.
5. I have a shirt that says "Santa's Little Helper." I bought it as an adult.
6. I generally have a Christmas song stuck in my head from the day after Thanksgiving until January and sometimes, even later than that.
7. I love telling perfect strangers, "Merry Christmas" instead of saying "goodbye".
8. One of the reasons we got married in December is partly due to my love of Christmas and the way the church is decorated during that time. (Here is where I am shamelessly uploading a picture from the big day. Aren't the Christmas decorations in the background awesome?! We took these outside the train depot.)

Now that you know how much I love Christmas, you can only imagine my delight when I went to Target today and found a small isle, tucked behind the Halloween costumes and skulls, that contained the beginnings of Christmas decor. I walked down the isle, slowly, looking forward to the next few weeks when that one isle would soon grow into many isles, like a Chia Pet. I picked up a few boxes of Christmas cards, imagining our friends and family opening up our Christmas cheer and hanging them with the other holiday greeting cards they have collected this season. I looked at the duffel bags for Christmas trees and imagined myself pulling ours out of the attic and fluffing up her branches like a prom dress. And then . . . well, then I was at the end of the isle and realized that my ground turkey was going to smell funky if I didn't get myself to the check out lanes, but I did hum "Go Tell it on the Mountain" while on my way.

You may have gathered that I am not one of those people who sees Christmas decorations in October and grumbles about how Christmas keeps coming earlier and earlier. I love that fact!! **Side Note: You should know that I am probably going to have a ton of Christmas-themed blogs in the up coming months due to the my love of this topic.** I know that there are not many of my kind out there. In fact, I only know of two other people who love Christmas as much as I do: Laura and Krista. Everyone else I know seems to be able to contain themselves long enough to wait for Christmas until the "appropriate" time. What a big, fat, bummer fest. No thank you.

We usually travel down to Chicago for Thanksgiving, but this year we are staying in the Twin Cities. When Troy and I made our decision to stay, one of my first thoughts was, "Now, I'm going to have to wait to decorate for Christmas!" I usually decorate the week before, using the excuse that we will be out of town. Since we are having Thanksgiving at our house, I'm going to have to wait until at least our guests leave to pull out my old friends.

Anywho, all of this to say, it's official - at least for retailers and for me - the Christmas season has begun, and I couldn't be more excited!