Idaho Falls

62 IDAHO FALLS MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2021 OUT THERE PHOTO AND STORY BY GREGG LOSINSKI WHEN IT COMES to the holidays there is little doubt that in America we have gotten a bit carried away. Labor Day had hardly passed this year when my favor- ite big-box store started to sneak out the Christmas stuff. Nothing major, just some boxes of lights, but give me a break. Christmas was still 100 days away! Holidays certainly mark the times that are special when we can spend time with friends and family, but me thinks that big business has taken over things more for the money than the sentiment. It used to be that the actual holiday was a special thing. Sure, we all had special traditions and fun ways that we liked to celebrate and decorate, but now the leadup has overtaken the actual event itself. Back in the fall, special Halloween stores popped up in abandoned storefronts. Halloween is fun and all that, but some people have taken off and made it an excuse to decorate even more than the most excessive Griswold-style Christmas extravaganza. From a mar- keting standpoint, "The Nightmare Before Christmas" was a chilling precursor of the unholy merging of the two holidays that we are now forced to endure from October through the New Year. Thanksgiving itself has almost taken a backseat to Black Friday! Of course, having special decorations for each holiday also requires proper storage totes of the appropriate colors to pack away all the doodads and gewgaws we absolutely must have to properly set the scene for each upcoming holiday. Heaven forbid that we would store things in a plain plastic tote or be so irreverent as to jam it all in a plain cardboard box. The fact that most of us can afford a few extra decora- tions here and there to celebrate the holidays is proba- bly not a bad thing. It means that we have some income that we have deemed excess that we can afford to at least head down to the Dollar Store and buy a basket load of decorations made in Asia for just a few bucks. Some of the stuff is actually pretty cute, but you do have to wonder what the poor laborer forced to work in a factory in China making elf ear headbands must think about Americans. In my opinion, no matter what the holiday, it is impor- tant to not get too caught up in the commercialism that is just waiting to suck you in. All the stuff can be fun, especially the gifts at Christmas, but it is more impor- tant to enjoy the time with people you care about. When I was growing up, my grandmother always slaved for days preparing a traditional Polish Christmas Eve Dinner. The food was delicious and just kept coming, course after course. It kept coming because grandma never took the time to sit down and enjoy dinner with the family. No matter how much we told her to sit and eat, she just couldn't stop. She was addicted to the rush of shoveling out perogies and potatoes. In her mind, you couldn't celebrate the birth of Jesus unless you had a full stomach! She loved us all, but let the food get in the way of actually spending time with her loved ones. So, whether it is spending your last COVID-19 check to decorate your yard with 20-foot animated skeletons acting out the 10 Days of Christmas or piling plates high with perogies, remember the real reason for the holidays is about taking the time to enjoy them with the people you care about. There are plenty of places that deliver pizza on Christmas. IF Spooked by the Holiday Spirits

• Cover