'Tis the Season to Spend

Following a doubt filled holiday during which I asked myself repeatedly why I thought it was such a good idea to move to a country I'd never been to and work at a school I'd never seen, I am back to school and back to loving my life in Switzerland. Oddly enough, living abroad does offer the strange fringe benefit of appreciating and loving home like never before. Most recently, the thing I value the most about the wonderful US of A is the strategic placement of Thanksgiving between Halloween and Christmas. This patriotic and historically sentimental national holiday wards off the hell that is the Christmas Season from rearing its nasty head in every storefront and TV commercial before that most significant biggest shopping day of the year otherwise known as the fourth Friday in November. I thought an entire month of that heinous frippery was quite enough to drive any sane person into a straight jacket. Well, try two months, my friend. Halloween is virtually nonexistent in most of continental Europe, and of course, they do not celebrate Thanksgiving. The result: Christmas displays, commercials, ornaments, chocolates (oh yes, plenty of those) and songs start infiltrating everyone's lives by the middle of October. America may be the consumer capital of the world, but fear not, my fellow yanks; our European counterparts are doing their best to catch up and they've got a head start.