About a week before school started this year, I walked into a local variety store to pick up a few household cleaners and last-minute gardening supplies.

And there, front and center, were boxes of brightly colored wrapping paper, garlands, talking Santas and dainty angels, along with tinsel, red stockings and bags of gold, red, and green bows.

Christmas! And school hadn’t even started yet.

Each year, it seems that one store wants to get the jump on another, earlier and earlier for the Christmas shopping and decorating frenzy, something like the political primaries getting so early that no one has had a chance yet to sort out who all the candidates are.

But that trip did it.

To me, it signified an increasing tendency to live in the future, rather than living in the here and now.

Yes, we should financially plan for our retirement, college tuition or buying a home. But more and more, it seems that we can’t quite enjoy what’s going on today.

The marketplace – and society in general – seem to push this philosophy.

A week before school, we should have bought our paper and pencils, calculators and computers, not snowmen and wrapping paper. For there is so much more to feel, hear, see and thoroughly enjoy before the rush toward satisfying the extreme commercialism of Christmas.

If we’re gardeners – flowers or vegetable – there are gorgeous blooms to pick, maybe dry, and display. Or tons of vegetables to preserve for the long winter months. Or a glorious autumn season to deeply inhale.

Then there’s the second most popular decorating and celebrating day – Halloween, with the lovely fall colors of the leaves, there are pumpkins and apples, creepy spiders and ghosts, parties and trick-or-treaters.

Thanksgiving is the most nostalgic and “got to be home” holiday there is in this country. And the least commercial.

Sure, millions of turkeys become the centerpiece of a family’s Thanksgiving dinner, and along with that are the many other wonderful traditional foods, all bringing in money for the grocery stores. But there are no gifts, except perhaps a gift bottle of wine for the host or a fall flower arrangement. Being home for Thanksgiving means being home, seeing family and friends we may not have seen for years. There’s not a lot of money spent and there are no gifts, a few cards, no candy or small presents for youngsters dressed up in their favorite nightmare. It’s a time to touch base, to visit, to catch up with each other’s lives.

Perhaps that’s why the commercial establishment virtually leap-frogs over Thanksgiving.

We need time to breathe in and relish each of these wonderful holidays, think of what they mean, and just have fun.

Then, and only then, can we throw ourselves into the Christmas season, with its delightful decorations, traditional foods, stockings, church services, and thankfulness for the day.

And maybe then we can stop putting a halt to the day-to-day, but oh-so-important just plain living events of “waiting until after the holidays.”

For living is meant to be lived one day at a time, for waking up and being thankful for yet another day, for seeing and hearing and experiencing the tiny parts of our lives, both good and not so good.

These small, routine parts of our lives, make up the overwhelmingly greatest portion of our lives.

Why do we want to miss them?