The man of the house and I were taking our daily walk, this time up Broad Street, enjoying the fall color and discussing our Thanksgiving plans. As we neared LaGrange College, where lovely Christmas decorations have been in place since, oh, mid-November, I officially surrendered.

“Let’s just don’t have Thanksgiving this year,” I said. “Nobody else is.”

At least it seems that way.

Now, I know I’m not breaking new ground here. In my Thanksgiving column of 1981, I wrote, “Nowadays, Thanksgiving has become just a comma in the long, frantic sentence between Halloween and Christmas. Thanksgiving dinner is being gobbled up, but not necessarily by the thankful. Thanksgiving is being gobbled up by Christmas.”

Stores have been putting out Christmas decorations along with back-to-school supplies since my now-grown children were into crayons and bookbags. So what’s new?

Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems the popular culture, which used to half-heartedly lament the premature arrival of Christmas, has now embraced it. Where once it was only the super-organized who did their Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving, now almost everybody does. Where once it was only the kooky neighbor who put up her Christmas tree the day after Halloween, now lots of otherwise sane people decorate for Christmas in mid-autumn. We deck the malls and the halls before we buy our Thanksgiving turkeys.

And nobody thinks much about it.

It’s become OK, accepted, maybe even fashionable.

Even little old me, perhaps the last holdout, is having second thoughts.

Oh, I still think we’ve gone way too far.

Flipping channels on the car radio more than a week ago, I heard the unmistakable tune of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and assumed it was a mistake or, at least, a joke. “Some DJ is about to get fired,” I thought and then some DJ came on and enthusiastically announced that the station would be playing Christmas music nonstop until, well, Christmas.

At that precise moment, a blue SUV whizzed past, a fresh-cut Christmas tree tied to its roof.

Yes, I still think we’ve gone too far in buying into the holiday hype, but I’m at least, sort of, understanding it.

“I just love the warm feelings and the excitement of Christmas,” a very grounded young mother explained, when I expressed shock at her early decorating. “Besides, it’s so much work. It’s not worth it for just two or three weeks.”

Indeed.

As one who has an embarrassing number of huge plastic bins full of Christmas decorations in the attic, I understand the urge to enjoy them a little while longer. But I think the anticipation is at least as enjoyable - and appropriate - as the experience.

I can wait. I can wait. I can wait.

But I’m no longer going to look down my nose at those who can’t. As long as they remember the reason for the season - it’s not all about candy canes and reindeer games - I won’t get on their case.

But I’m not going to cancel my membership in the S.P.Y.L.C., an organiztion I attempted to found in that 1981 column. The Society for the Prevention of a Year-Long Christmas has a place in this world.

And so does Thanksgiving, a holiday that should set the mood, not be an afterthought, on the way to Christmas.

There’s a reason for both seasons.

Repeat after me: “Thanksgiving matters.”

It’s important. It’s important. It’s important.

Even if what you are most thankful for is … Christmas.