Holiday creep

Halloween was just last week. Our jack-o-lanterns are still sitting, fresh and perky, on the front step.

But it already looks a lot like Christmas, at least in Retail Land. The ghosts and ghouls and witches have vanished, replaced overnight by Santas and reindeer and angels.

What happened to Thanksgiving? Commercially, it barely exists. That was clear last weekend when my husband and I tried shopping for a care package for our college-student daughter. We'd missed Halloween, so he wanted to send her a Thanksgiving surprise -- a couple treats, something seasonal for her apartment.

The pickings were pretty slim. No turkeys or cornucopias on candy wrappers or knickknacks. Even autumn motifs were hard to come by. After scouring three stores, we finally found one dish towel with an orange maple leaf appliqued on it.

I've always liked Thanksgiving, in large part because it WAS less commercial than the other big holidays. The focus was on family, not stuff that you buy.

But as Halloween gets bigger and glitzier, and Christmas starts earlier and earlier, it's also getting harder to savor and appreciate harvest time and Thanksgiving as their own unique holiday season.

Christmas creep and the Thanksgiving squeeze have been going on for a while. The recently departed Andy Rooney, "60 Minutes" resident curmudgeon, was grousing about it in 2002. (www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/11/22/60minutes/rooney/main530555.shtml)