All aboard for yet another all-too-quick holiday season

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

As if life weren't fast enough. Here it comes. A giant, speeding runaway locomotive, and what do you know? It's playing "Jingle Bells" and heading right toward us. What's our choice? We can stand our ground and get clobbered by the thing. Or we can take a leap, grab on and become human hood ornaments clinging to umpteen tons of metal and steel barreling along a set of tracks that lead directly to . . . Christmas Day.

Some choice. How'd we get here, anyway? Weren't we just in the garden listening to Paul Parent trying to figure out what the mold was on our coreopsis? Didn't we just put the lawnmower away? Now it's deck-the-halls time, like it or not.

I like it, really I do. But how did it get here so quickly? And why are all the days between now and Christmas a marathon of endurance full of long lines and short tempers instead of the advertised interval of good cheer?

I have always believed that Christmas would be far better served and appreciated if it were moved ahead a few weeks. Give it some breathing room. Get it away from Thanksgiving. Consider the possibilities of, say, a Jan. 25 Christmas. For starters, Thanksgiving would be a day of real thanks giving. We could add to our prayers, "Thank you God that tomorrow is no longer the busiest shopping day of the year. Thank you for allowing us to actually pause on this day and consider our true blessings, the biggest of which is we don't have to run around like crazy people for the next four weeks! We have two whole months to prepare. Alleluia."

Two months for retail stores to promote their BIGGEST SALE EVER. Two months of daily early-bird specials and store coupon days, and DON'T MISS IT! PRICES WILL NEVER BE THIS LOW AGAIN! Two months to leisurely look through catalogs and explore the Internet and write Christmas cards (maybe we actually would write them), and cut out recipes. And who knows? There might even be time to try a few.

Two months to see the "Christmas Revels" and "Black Nativity" and take in one of those garden-club home Christmas tours where ordinary houses are lavishly, but tastefully, decorated. And still have time to watch "Frosty" and "Scrooge" and "Miracle on 34th Street" and "It's a Wonderful Life" with the kids. Two months to read out loud, a little bit every night, "A Christmas Carol" and "The Littlest Angel" and "The Gift of the Magi." And get a family Christmas photo done. And visit friends, really visit, not just drop by. And go Christmas caroling with the neighbors. And make roll-out sugar cookies and gingerbread men and mulled wine.

Imagine. If Christmas were Jan. 25, Christmas lights would burn through the darkest days of the year, not just for a few weeks during the darkest month. And January wouldn't feel so cold or look so bare. It would be pretty and bright, and even being stuck in traffic wouldn't be so bad because it isn't when there are lights in all the windows and wreaths on every door. And when the time came to take the lights down, the nights would be shorter and the days longer and it wouldn't matter so much that it was still winter, because by then it'd be only a short time until spring.

If Christmas were Jan. 25 we would get far more use out of our Christmas plates and mugs and tablecloths and napkins. Which would induce us to buy more Christmas things, like vases and throws, which would make retailers happy and the economy grow. We would play Christmas carols almost till Valentine's Day. And have Christmas parties, the way we mean to but never do.

And the best thing would be that the spirit of Christmas, of community and giving and sharing, wouldn't be so forced and hurried and harried, because it would be extended, too. Plus, imagine starting a New Year, a new millennium, reaching out instead of closing in, celebrating every day instead of hibernating until spring.

A Jan. 25 Christmas would add some much-needed balance to the calendar, and to our lives. It's fantasy, of course. The reality is is that Christmas is less than five weeks away. The train is on course and we're on the tracks, and much as we might like to, we can't slow it down.