You know, the holiday season gets on my nerves. I love Christmas and Hanukkah, but I prefer to wait until at least after Thanksgiving to celebrate them. But this year, as soon as Halloween was over - bam! Wal-Mart is jam-packed with those tacky inflatable blow up yard decoration thingy's. No lie - I was in Wal-Mart on November 11 and what do I hear? Karen Carpenter crooning out either "The Christmas Song" or "Merry Christmas, Darling." On November 11!!! Nothing makes my skin crawl like hearing Karen make that "oo" sound when she belts out the line "...from one tew ninety-tew..."
But that's how it usually goes, something like that (or TBS playing National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation four times a week starting after Veteran's Day) gets me hacked and it's really hard to get in the mood for Christmas. And by the time it's proper (in my estimation) to begin the Xmas festivities, we're (or at least I'm) kinda burned out. But then Christmas finally arrives, and then, like Keyser Söze - whew! It's gone.
The feeling of brevity doesn't really hit me until the decorations start going down. In particular, I will miss the storefront window painting at places like grocery stores. You know what I'm talking about, that green, red & white shoe-polish-type-paint used to say "Season's Greetings" in cursive and to make little leaves of holly. In the drive-thru at Milo's today, I found myself admiring the perfect cursive and the very good holly drawn (or stenciled) on the window. Then I quasi-sighed at the thought: "that'll be taken off tomorrow."
Photo from balaji shankar's flickr set.
Licensed under Creative Commons,
some rights reserved.
"During the Christmas season colored fluorescent bulbs are illuminated in each panel of the glass curtain wall, creating an enormous lit graphical display visible on the skyline from well outside the city.
The tradition began in 1972 with the display featuring Christmas trees and NOEL being spelled out along the building facade. In 1975, NOEL was replaced with JOY. Later a stocking and wreath were added to the display giving each face a different design. Currently, the east and west sides are Christmas trees, the south a wreath, and the north a stocking."
The building has had other lighting displays too, including the Olympic rings for the 1996 games, and American flags for the Bicentennial in '76 and the return of our troops from Operation Desert Storm in the early 90's. (from B'hamWiki)
So NYC's Rockefeller Center has a tree, big deal. We have our Regions Center. I've always been a fan, Downtown wouldn't be Downtown without it (I felt the same way about the green/red light on Vulcan's torch, too *sigh*). I think that they should do something with the lights more often than just Christmas (power bills & energy crisis be darned). But for now, I will try to enjoy these last remaining hours I have with the Christmas display. See you next year, Regions Center.
Photo by Dystopos. Licensed under Creative Commons, some rights reserved.
