Happy Thanksgiving to all of you in the U.S. – hope you all got your fill of turkey, stuffing and all the rest of the trimmings today!

Now, when i was growing up, Thanksgiving — or more specfically, the day  after Thanksgiving, I guess — was always the start of the Christmas season. Decorations went up in town, stores had Christmas-themed gifts for sale, and pretty much from now until December 25th everything was all about the holiday season. Over the past decades, that has changed quite a bit, as far as I remember. So, stores will nowadays in the U.S. start having Christmas decorations, et. al. in October. It has been a while since I lived in the U.S., so I don’t know for certain how early Christmas things appear in the stores – is it before Halloween? Probably.

Here in Tübingen, of course, it’s not Thanksgiving today, nor it is it any other partiuclar holiday. But, for whateve reason, today was the day they started putting up the Christmas decorations here in town. Here’s what I saw when I walked back from the grocery store late this afternoon:

First Christmas Decorations near our house, Tübingen

BTW, color of the streetllamp blub really is (always) greenish in person; the strings of lights that go across the street are white, though.

In the spirit of when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail, I also made a black and white version of this photo, since it wasn’t very colorful to begin with, and I’d just made that black and white version of the tree reflection photo the other day:

First Christmas Decorations near our house - Black and White photo, Tübingen

Note that those are the bike handles in the forground, not more decorations or lights, although they look kind of sparkly in the black and white version of the photo.

The funny thing is that when the lights on the decorations were off, these decorations themselves were fairly mundane looking:  fake evergreen boughs with lightbulbs sticking out  of them is festive, but a completely different look than when the lightbulbs are on. These decorations are definitely best viewed at night, IMHO.

I find it funny, though, that today was the day they put these things up. It was almost like they had the kind of “let’s wait until the end of November to decorate for Christmas” spirit  that I remember from my  childhood. However, don’t let the decorations today fool you into thinking they have preserved a more conservative, not-as-commercial approach to Christmas around here. You see, stores changed over their wares to sell Christmas decorations, trees and other gifts way back in August.

Of course, Halloween is not a big holiday here in Tübingen, and they don’t have a North American-style Thanksgiving to merchandise in November. So, I guess, what other holiday could stores promote all during the fall here if not Christmas, eh?