It's beginning to look a lot like, what?

Thanksmas? Is that what you'd call this time of year?

Because I know for sure that Halloween just passed - we've still got a giant jack-o-lantern taped to our big front window to prove it. Plus I remember going to the All Saints Vigil Mass on Saturday, seeing as how it was only two days ago.

And that means time is drawing closer to the final Thursday of the month, which is Thanksgiving Day this year, and Thanksgiving is always a nice holiday for, you know, being thankful and eating things. And then eating a dressing sandwich on Friday made of a slab of dressing cut in two with slices of turkey in the middle, garnished with lashings of gravy and then heated up in the microwave and eaten from a paper plate with a cornucopia printed on it. Maybe with a matching napkin.

So why then, when I walk into Hobby Lobby or Wal-Mart and similar establishments, am I accosted by festive Christmas displays featuring Mr. and Mrs. Clauses that really move (which could only be creepier if they were wearing clown suits), and enormous Christmas trees with lavish decorations and piles of Christmas cards, twinkle lights and candy dishes shaped like snowmen and trumpet-blowing angels?

(Last year the girls and I went into Hobby Lobby and employees were busily replacing the Christmas decorations with Valentine's Day decorations and it was still a week before Christmas. Hobby Lobby, you have got to be kidding me...)

What happened to Thanksgiving? If I try to eat a dressing sandwich on Friday, November 27 this year, is some retailer with a bureaucratic gleam in his eye going to force his way into my kitchen and slap the sandwich out of my hand, snarling, "Look here, YOU. It's been nothing but candy canes and sugarplums SINCE OCTOBER 15. SO PUT DOWN THAT TURKEY AND EAT THIS STOLLEN RIGHT NOW"?

Poor Thanksgiving, the forgotten holiday.