Thanksgiving gets the shaft. The day where everyone is supposed to be thankful, happy and focused on family and friends doesn't get the respect it deserves. Don't deny it, otherwise why would people, after chucking the rotting Halloween jack o'lanterns, start stringing holiday lights?

It’s only the middle of November and I’m walking through the train station, down city streets and through shopping malls seeing Christmas trees, Santas and moving reindeer. Instead of hanging wreaths and garland, shouldn’t there be a large cornucopia or lights shaped like turkey legs at least adorning homes and public venues until Nov. 28?

I thank all those people who make a little effort to acknowledge this glorious holiday, including that house in Glenview near the corner of East Lake and Milwaukee avenues which has a couple inflatable turkeys and pilgrim decorations.

While the early decorating does get to me, this is also the time I begin avoiding the malls, especially Woodfield in Schaumburg.

Anyone who has gone shopping at a packed mall will understand that parking lots are the bane of any shopper’s existence. It’s best to get there early and claim a parking spot, otherwise you will be stalking the aisles until you’re all the way in aisle ZZZ. And by the time you complete your trek through the expanse of parked cars, you don’t want to shop anymore.

But I also think some of the problem comes when malls hire extra parking lot help a.k.a. guys with orange light-up sticks trying to direct traffic at every intersection. I personally think they only make things worse. The lines seem to get longer as we wait for them to wave cars through. All the waiting makes me want to give up and do all of my shopping online.

Speaking of shopping, I can’t believe there are people out there who have already finished their Christmas shopping. I have barely begun to think about what I’m getting and for whom. I have a solitary gift in my possession and the only reason it’s been purchased this early is because I bought it while on vacation.

While you think, “Hey, I’ll get all my shopping done so I won’t have to do it later,” you’ll inevitably forget to buy a gift for someone when you thought you were prepared and possibly spend time exchanging the gifts you’ve already bought for something better.

I’m not trying to be a curmudgeon or the holiday police, but there’s something about these holiday infractions that raises my hackles.

Inevitably these things don’t matter too much because I know I’ll be sitting at my Thanksgiving table on Nov. 27 happy to be around my family and eating deep fried turkey with all the fixins’, and then I’ll begin my preparations for Christmas.

So I wish everyone reading this blog, and sympathizing with my pet peeves, a Happy Thanksgiving or Happy Holidays.

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By: Heather Leszczewicz | Staff Writer At 11/20/2008 - 2:34pm |  |  |