Last night while I was walking home from a restaurant with some friends I saw a few houses with their Christmas lights up. Naturally two thoughts popped in my head: 1) isn't it a little early for that 2) It's like 80 degrees at 8:30 at night? How can it be Christmas time? Traditionally my family, and many other families I know around the Flowerplex area, use the Thanksgiving holiday, starting of course the weekend AFTER Thanksgiving, to begin the process of Christmas decoration. We get out the tree, untangle the lights, dust off the giant Santa collection, and assemble the Christmas village complete with ice-skater on pond. My brother's and I liked hanging the lights on the house, but we used to hide so that we wouldn't have to clean out the gutters on the roof. That never worked. But I think the reason that this process started a week early here is because this past weekend was their holiday weekend. Mexico celebrated (if they can have a party for it...they will) its second revolution this weekend and most people had Monday off so they naturally used that time as we do in the good'ol U.S of A to get a hop on the tree lighting. Being from Texas I'm not really used to the whole White Christmas thing anyway, but here it seems extremely warm to be thinking about anyone dressing up in a big red suit and granting Christmas wishes without finding themselves on the floor, medics on call to bring an I.V due to Kringle's heat exhaustion. It's less than a month till I come home an I think getting in the Christmas mood will be much easier once I hit that cold (55 degree) Dallas air on the 20th.