I can definitely tell autumn has arrived. Not necessarily by the cooler temperatures, but because I can hear the peanut fans at the co-op from my parents house. Heck, at night time, it's hard to find a spot in town where you can't hear those fans.

But that's one of things I simply associate with fall.

Along with the fair, the changing leaves, raking the leaves, bagging the leaves, raking the leaves again, bales of hay, scarecrows and Christmas decorations.

Christmas decorations?

That's right. Today's the first day of October and already stores are in the process of putting out their Christmas decorations. Some have even had them out since Labor Day!

Now, I know as a little kid I was always one of the most impatient when it came to wishing Christmas would hurry up, but get real, there are at least two major decorating holidays and a few other important events between now and December 25.

First off, there is Halloween. As a kid, we always decorated our yard with hay bales, scarecrows, pumpkins and the like. My dad would go get a pumpkin and we'd carve it a week or two before Halloween and light it with a candle. My mom made a ceramic jack o' lantern that we used for years until it finally broke. At any rate, we had fun with the month of October.

We'd head off to Pensacola to the fair, go to peanut boils and fall festivals, and then, we'd top it off by trick-or-treating around town.

Then, it was time to get ready for Thanksgiving.

Halloween was over and November meant a time to slow things down and be a little more reverential. Sure, we could leave the hay bales out and some corn stalks, but my mom shifted into high gear making sure our house was a pilgrim's paradise.

Of course, there was Veteran's Day in between, and that always meant taking a break and remembering some of the more important people in life. Then, back to Thanksgiving.

Heck, you didn't even really talk about Christmas until the week of Thanksgiving. And that was only after all the football games were over and everybody had taken their afternoon nap after eating way to much.

Only then, after "Turkey Day" did you start pulling out all the stops for Christmas. Sometimes, we would go pick out a Christmas tree, but we always started breaking out the Christmas decorations. But it was after Thanksgiving.

I really can't understand why we have to start breaking out the decorations earlier and earlier each year, I mean, afterall, isn't the beginning of September still technically summer?

I worked in retail for several Christmases (you might remember me, I was the kid trying to convince your husband to buy you a diamond ring for Christmas) so I understand the importance of the season on retailers, but September is entirely too early to start.

For now, I'm just going to enjoy hearing the hum of the peanut fans, smell the cool, brisk air in the mornings and get back to raking all those leaves.