Every year, I have watched as Thanksgiving has been shunted to the back row when it comes to holidays, but this year takes the cake.

We thoroughly enjoy Halloween at our house, decorating every bit as much as we do for Christmas. I know that’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s my husband’s favorite holiday and his joy in infectious.

We started decorating a little later this year, and when I went to a local shop that shall remain unnamed to pick up a few replacement lights, I nearly turned around and left.

Christmas is already on the shelves, and what is left of Halloween has been relegated to the sale aisles, with items jumbled together as if you say “if you waited this late, you figure it out.”

Enter the side eye.

If you don’t know what a side eye is, ask anyone 20 years or younger and they can show you. It’s the ultimate expression of derision or frustration and annoyance and done right, it can cut any of us down to size.

This is the moment I’d like to cut the retail world down to size.

Halloween is such fun, and a safe way to indulge the parts of us that like to be scared, in a good way. Think screaming on a roller coaster or jumping through the ceiling during a scary movie. It’s also a way for us to get to be someone or something else for just one night. We have permission, encouragement in fact, to put on costumes and be other than who we are for a little while without anyone looking askance. And we go about collecting candy of all things, so we’re given permission to indulge our sweet tooth, for heaven’s sake! I know, I know, moderation, but how many of us at any other time would be OK with the huge buckets of candy that always end up on our desks or our kitchen counters at Halloween? The rest of the year we practice restraint, we tell ourselves we don’t need that bite sized Hershey bar (or three) and pretend to enjoy our carrot sticks. Halloween is the one time of year it’s OK to shrug our shoulders and say “I couldn’t let the kids eat all of this!” as we swallow a third mini Almond Joy.

And after that, we have the holiday that makes overeating an entire meal permissible, but that seems to have completely disappeared from the retail roundup. I know fall decorating, which is what most of us do for Thanksgiving, is much more generic than Christmas and it’s less lucrative, but part of what makes Christmas so magical is it only comes once a year. And it doesn’t start in September or October.

Somehow, putting up Christmas decorations now would rob the season of some of its magic, its “specialness” for lack of a better word, at least for me. I know people who have already decorated — my dearest friend had her Christmas decorations up at the end of July and I won’t fault her for it, because she loves it.

But for me, I want to maintain the spirit of Christmas that only comes once a year. If I put up decorations too early, they begin to meld into the woodwork, to fade in the background of everyday life and when Christmas finally arrives, I no longer really see them.

And while I understand the sentiment of keeping Christmas in your heart all the year round, I think of it more as we should be kind to others always, generous when the need arises, grateful and gracious. But Christmas itself is a different kind of energy, and I want to hold on to that extraordinary light that begins in December to grow, until the star of Bethlehem goes from being a soft guiding light to center stage, and the world is somehow made new again on December 25.

I just can’t handle the Christmas decorations and the carols this early.

Give us all the moment to enjoy each holiday as it comes. Sure there are smaller ones (Veterans Day is in there, too) that might not fill the corporate coffers as much, but pushing Christmas on us so unbearably early robs the season of at least part of what makes it so wonderful.

It’s like rushing to get old when we are teens, then plunging through young adulthood toward success and all the things that come with it, then toward retirement when we can finally rest. When all along, we needed to be enjoying each phase as we pass through it, because it will not come again. Every moment in time has its own value.

I doubt that the folks at the aforementioned store would care, but I’m giving them my best side eye anyway, because I am going to enjoy these moments one by one, as they come, and I will not be rushed into a too-early Christmas.

So — happy Halloween, a week early and no more. I hope you have a grand costume even if you’re only answering the door. I hope you have costumes for your pets if that brings you joy, and I hope you have some truly imaginative trick or treaters. I’ll be back in November and in December with other wishes, when the time is right.

Elisabeth Strillacci covers crime, courts, Spencer, East Spencer and Kannapolis for the Salisbury Post.