November 20: Merry Christmas

I’ve said before that Brattleboro runs on a very well defined annual cycle, more obviously so than other, larger places I’ve lived. Sometimes I don’t notice all the changes immediately, like when I went online this spring and learned that other people nearby had seen hummingbirds a month before me.

The most pervasive annual cycle must surely be the retail cycle. And so it really wasn’t a big deal to see Costco fully prepped for Christmas when I stopped in on the way home from the airport. But then when I was hunting for a station in the NPR dead zone in Western Mass., I heard a full on Christmas station, and that really made it real. Christmas shopping season is upon us… maybe it’s already been on for weeks but I’m officially in the loop.