Story by Jon Stalnaker AKA The Studebaker Dude
I roll my eyes when I see Christmas decorations going up after Halloween. The time to start the Christmas season is after Thanksgiving—after all, what is at the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade? Don’t tell me you didn’t know it was Santa Claus. He closes out the Thanksgiving Day celebration by letting everyone know it’s time to decorate for Christmas.
Thanksgiving is a strange holiday. It is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. So, if November 1st falls on Sunday, it can be as early as Nov 22nd. If it falls on Friday, it could be as late as November 28th. This year it was on Nov 27th. You might say, “So what?” Well, that cuts almost a week out of our decorating for Christmas time.
That’s where we are right now. We had a busy Thanksgiving, followed by daughter Jill’s birthday two days later. That’s not a problem for young people who are chock full of energy. As hard as I try to keep myself healthy, I must tell you that Carlene and I are feeling the years this time around. It’s not just the last month that is wearing us down; we have had a busy year in 2025. Three multi-state trips also took a lot of juice out of us.
So, here we are, almost two weeks after Thanksgiving, and we still have most of our Christmas decorating to do. We are both lacking enthusiasm, as this is no small task. But I’m confident we will Git-R-Done. We got most of our shopping done, and we are only awaiting a small number of items before we can send out the Christmas packages for the family and friends who are so far away.
The packages are a big job as Carlene likes to make them special by using lots of stamps to pay the postage. It takes a little more time for the window clerks at the post office to accept the packages, but they don’t seem to get grumpy about the extra work. It has been my experience over a 36-year postal career that most postal workers love the additional work of the Christmas season. Speaking for myself, I always loved Christmas at the post office. It was a lot different when I first started in 1974 as a clerk and mail handler. I recall 7 days a week and 10 to 12 hours a day. And this was before they had to pay us penalty overtime.
There were more packages back then, and no bar codes to sort the boxes. We did it all by hand, by having one clerk at the top of a giant cone and the other clerks at the bottom putting the packages in canvas sacks. We unloaded tractor-trailers by hand back then. It was hard work, but it was so much fun, at least it was for me. There were so many more Christmas cards back then too. We hardly get three or four these days. We sorted all the cards manually, and many of them were larger than the cubby we sorted them into. That just meant that we had to empty the cubbies more frequently. The whole building was just buzzing with holiday spirit.
Just thinking about being a postal worker back in the 70s gets my holiday mojo risin’. I’m getting excited about Christmas now. I’m ready to get started decorating. No need to panic, we still have two weeks to get it done. However, the sooner we get it done, the longer we get to enjoy it. And, of course, we can’t forget the reason for the season. Time for me to ponder something I’ve always wondered: If Jesus was born on December 25th, why isn’t January 1st the very next day?
