The weather has finally taken a turn to the cooler temperatures here, crisp mornings and midday temps in the 60s. I’ve brought out my plaids and flannels, cardigans and turtleneck sweaters from storage and packed away my shortsleeve shirts.

Along with the welcome change in the weather we’ve started into the fall activities: a fire in the fire pit last weekend, thoughts of hot chocolate and hot mulled wine; pumpkin bread with chocolate chips at a friend’s house along with grilled burgers for lunch. I’ve started looking for a couple of my favorite holiday recipes tucked into my Joy of Cooking cookbook. White chocolate peppermint bread and snickerdoodle cookies are fun to bake and share with the neighbors.

A couple of weeks ago I stopped in at Lowe’s, our local home supply chain store, looking for mums to plant for fall. And saw this. October 8th and Santa is ready.

I’ve wondered before about the hedge or no-interference zone we erect around our holidays to protect them. Pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks arrives suspiciously soon. I feel like I’m kept waiting for my peppermint hot chocolate. Today felt like a real clash of holidays and here we were, contributing to the chaos.

Everyone knows that Christmas comes on the same date every year; Halloween is always October 31st but the celebrating might often come a week before. Thanksgiving is reliably at the end of November but the actual date can slip a bit. Today found us working on all three celebrations at the same time.

Plans for Christmas Eve at our church, and the Advent Season as well, began back in July. With so many activities scheduled between the end of October and the beginning of January, any production elements need to occur well before they are actually needed. So our holiday-inspired Gingerbread Cafe decor was finished up today.

Tomorrow our church will celebrate with a family-focused Fall Festival and Trunk or Treat for the kids. Part of the decor I am using for our truck display (Toy Story theme) will be repurposed as wrapped Christmas presents in our Lobby next month. We picked up brown wrapping paper and red ribbon from Hobby Lobby but we had to make our way through the Fall decor first.

While my team was painting cardboard gingerbread houses today, my wife was setting up in our church Lobby for our Thanksgiving food drive: bags and lists of suggested food items for donations to one of our ministry partners were set out on tables to be handed out over the next couple of Sundays.

We are trying to hold each holiday special and attempting to keep “season creep” to a minimum. Yet there are times when I have to wonder. “Too soon?”

How do you manage the holidays?