Premature Decoration

 A chronologically incorrect holiday experiment.

On Thanksgiving, people get weirdly territorial about timing, like, irrationally so. Most of us fall into one of two camps:

Team Mariah:
“All I Want for Christmas Is You Trick-or-Treaters Gone”. The shameless November 1^st crowd.

Team Tom Turkey:
The purists who piously display their autumn décor until after Thanksgiving, believing that Christmas decorations before then are just...wrong.

As wrong as calling Die Hard or Iron Man 3 a Christmas movie, an argument my husband insists on sparking every.single.year.

Apparently, if there’s a tree anywhere in the movie, it counts as a Christmas movie. Right.
Nothing says Christmas like terrorists and explosions and traumatic injuries.

Hallmark could never, but sure, let's call that festive.

Technically, there is a third camp: people like my neighbor who’s still rocking his 20-foot Halloween skeleton in his yard. So as I write this, it’s snowing, and it looks like the block couldn’t decide what month it is and just said, “screw it, all of them.”

Speaking of timing, there’s also the mysterious national tradition of Thanksgiving “dinner” happening at 2 p.m. So then, do you eat like normal that day, or do you skip lunch and show up well-dressed and hangry?

Do you eat another “dinner” at 6 pm, or do you just…wake up and eat all day?

So many questions.

Anyway, I’ve always been in that second group. I prefer the security of the familiar.
The tranquility of repetition. (V for Vendetta coded.)

Thanksgiving first, Christmas later.
Simple.

The real question is, why do we care this much?

Nobody's really fighting over someone else's décor; that's just the surface-level argument. The obsession with timing is about control, about convincing ourselves that there's still a predictable order to things, even though life goes haywire much more often than it goes to plan.

The Nov.1st camp isn't trying to 'rush' Christmas; they're yearning for the magic of it. And the purists aren't about blocking anyone's joy; they're protecting the structure and rituals that give the season a sense of stability.

So, when I, a purist at the soul level, asked my husband to drag out all the Christmas bins two weeks ago, even I had a moment of “God, who am I right now?”

But I didn’t care how it looked. I'm yearning for magic too.

I’m in a season where I need something, anything, to feel new and lighter. Definitely calmer. My house feels like it’s absorbed every ounce of the stress of the past few years, and no amount of deep cleaning is fixing it.

I can’t yet waltz into my favorite Amish furniture store with a wad of cash, as the budget committee (hi husband) negotiations are still ongoing. So I improvised.

I put up the tree.
...and immediately ran out of steam. Chronic insomnia is such a buzzkill.

The Balkan Storm himself ended up finishing the entire job while I was comatose, sleepbuds in, my face smushed in a pillow. The man deserves a medal, honestly.

But you know what? It helped. I changed something because I couldn’t change everything.

Which, honestly, is exactly how this entire year has gone.

So before I get into the next part, I would say that this piece today is just reflection. An honest look at what changed this year and what timing finally forced me to grow through, whether I wanted to or not.

When I started this platform months ago, it wasn’t because my life was organized (lol absolutely not) or I was in a place to commit a lot of time to it (also no). I just needed something to sort out the madness in real-time.

I didn’t have a profound message; I just figured that if I was dealing with this level of insanity, maybe someone else was too. And if one person read it and thought, “yeah, same,” that would be enough.

People have told me for years I should write a book. I love the idea, but the timing isn't right for me now, so I just keep saying, ‘someday.’

So this platform became the ‘something instead of nothing’; it was awful timing for me, but still a good choice. I didn’t write for niches or demographics, or any self-appointed editorial committees.

I just…told my stories.
I write about what I’ve lived so others don’t feel alone.

Life was nuts, and Opinions™ were plentiful, but readers kept showing up. A few at first, then more, from different states and different countries.

People I’ve never met, who have zero stake in my life, keep coming back to read the next new thing.

31 countries. Verified, real humans, not bots.

Still wrapping my head around that.

I didn’t present or promote it perfectly, nor did I try to go viral.  And the comments are rare, since Ghost basically requires a security clearance to leave one.
Truly, I get it.

But the numbers don’t lie.
And neither do the subscribers who somehow haven’t wandered off yet.
(Thanks for that, btw.)

People respond to authenticity - truth told like an actual human being.
Maybe they’re going through something too.
Maybe they’re also desperate to feel different.
Maybe they just want to know someone else’s life is as weird as theirs.

I tell the truth, but not the whole truth. Not everything belongs on the internet in real time. Some things are more important than a weekly story.

I’m not obligated to protect anyone, but I do. Some things need space, processing, and occasionally even silence.

There are people who should be extremely grateful that I believe in timing and restraint; if they understood how much I’ve held back, they’d understand just how careful I've actually been.

Another thing about timing is that it has a way of revealing things you already knew but hoped weren’t true. It’s disappointing but clarifying.

It reveals who's bothered by reality and who's bothered that I'm willing to talk about it. I write so no one feels alone, to help others, not to blame or shame, and I've stated that repeatedly.

And my writing doesn’t exist to validate someone else’s version of my life.

You learn who’s actually in your corner, who’s pretending, and who was never with you in the first place. Once you know that, you make your choices accordingly.

None of it bothers me, though; I know who I am and what I’m building here.
Someday, the book is coming, but I refuse to rush it.

I'm not always confident about the next step, but I trust my direction.

If my life proved anything this year, it’s that things can happen out of order and still turn out better than how I thought they were supposed to go.

There’s probably some bigger takeaway buried in all of this, but I just don’t care enough to keep digging for it; it's Thanksgiving, and I’ve got other things to do.

The Balkan Storm has his first Thanksgiving off since…well, since before we were even married. Our Thanksgiving has always been anytime after 7pm.

Guess what time dinner is today?
Sometime wildly earlier than that.

And yes, I’m already decorated for Christmas.
Both things I have mocked for years. I’m literally living the bit now.

At this point, I’ve accepted that I’m not qualified to judge anyone’s décor choices, timing, or opinions. I’m just out here winging it like everyone else.

The only thing I’m sure of is that I’m wearing my stretchy pants today, channeling Fat Thor energy and minding my business.

(Ok, yes, I’ll probably still be judging Halloween guy. I can only evolve so much.)

Happy Thanksgiving, ya’ll.  

Recommended Reads:

• Beautiful Lies – How everything started when nothing was “ready.”
• Clean Break – When timing forces a move you didn’t plan for.
• Movies: Escape or Compass? – Using pop culture when real life stops making sense.
• Two Truths and a Comic-Con Lie – Expectations vs reality with a plot twist.

Heather Papovich is an essayist, cultural writer, and longtime ghostwriter who explores trauma, resilience, and the stories we use to navigate real life. Her publication, Unfinished Business, blends personal narrative with sharp cultural insight and is read in 31 verified countries.

She writes about reinvention, the emotional weight of everyday life, and the role pop culture, especially the MCU, plays in how we cope, connect, and create meaning.