It’s bedtime on the evening of November 1st. Officially the first day of the Thanksgiving season.

Normally, I’m the person that gets wildly bent out of shape when stores start selling their Christmas wares before Halloween. Every holiday deserves it’s own moment. ALL HOLIDAYS MATTER, DAMMIT! The fall and winter holidays are set up especially well. Each of the majors has roughly a month to itself. That’s plenty of time to set up, enjoy, and tear down each holiday without feeling overwhelmed and underappreciated in doing so.

Well, not this year!

Last night, I took my babies out to scam candy from all our neighbors and after they went to bed, I pilfered my “mom tax” from them (all the MilkDuds are mine. YOU WILL NEVER KNOW THE TASTE OF A MILKDUD, SUCKERS!). It was a lovely night, made all the more delightful because it was Mothra’s first true trick-or-treating experience and once she got the hang of it, there was no stopping her! As an added bonus, because we live on a base overseas, a lot of locals were “sponsored” by Americans to come join the shenanigans. And in keeping with Japanese mores, many of them came with candies of their own to trade for our peanut butter cups and Snickers.

But this morning, after I dropped Godzilla at the bus stop (and sucked back the remainder of my cold coffee), I dismantled and dismembered Halloween from my house in a manner suitable for any horror movie. I was ruthless. I have never been more excited to trash the dollar store spider webs and box up all the chotchkes I’ve collected over the years.

And with all the gusto I could, I hauled out all our Christmas decor from the storage closet out back. See, here’s the thing. I’m normally a stickler for keeping Christmas at bay until after Thanksgiving. My family has always adhered to this rule and I love it. But last year, my husband was deployed until just a few weeks before Christmas and by the time he got home, we were in the throes of packing up our lives (for the THIRD TIME IN A YEAR) to move to the south of Japan. We arrived on our new base about two weeks ahead of Christmas and our household goods shipment arrived on Christmas Day. Many many things went awry last Christmas season, but not being able to give Mothra a truly magical first Christmas is among one of the hardest to come to grips with. So I said, “To hell with holiday rules!” this year and decided to set up Christmas early. We got totally screwed out of Christmas last year so I’m taking it out on Thanksgiving this year and I’m doing it giddily and unapologetically. Because watching Mothra’s eyes light up when she saw our Christmas tree lit up for the first time was everything. EVERYTHING.

Wait until she sees it with ornaments and a star!