With the holiday season fast upon us, it is easy to pass golden-hued afternoons listlessly filling up online shopping carts with cashmere and sparkles and spend what remains of our October paychecks on various autumn beverages, wishing away the final 70 degree afternoons before winter chills set in.
   We neglect days where neither the heat nor the air conditioner run and prematurely gulp down apple cider half-expecting to see Santa Claus slide down our chimneys a month and a half early — not to mention the lack of attention we give to the most caloric holiday of them all, Thanksgiving. I’ve recently heard many a Facebook friend refer to November as “Thanksgiving Awareness Month.” So few people engage in the masterpiece of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which I find to be the holiday’s most incredible component, and though I have already had countless conversations about my favorite Christmas beverage, I can’t remember the last time anyone asked my opinion on gravy vs. cranberry sauce.
   As a generation, we are all too eager to stuff our stockings before we stuff our turkey, assuming that if we begin our Christmas-planning while the leaves are still falling, we will achieve holiday perfection come Dec. 25. And the second the ball drops on Jan. 1, we will drag out the Christmas tree and break an ornament or two in the process and begin to desperately search for a significant other before Feb. 14. It is an endless pursuit of holiday perfection, which always focuses on the next holiday too early to enjoy the current one.
   However, this dissatisfaction is not strictly seasonal. My AP English teacher in high school had an anonymous anecdote pinned on her bulletin board that has stayed with me these three years since graduation: “As a rule, a man’s a fool. When it’s hot, he wants it cool. When it’s cool, he wants it hot, always wanting what is not.” Our obsession with forward-thinking concerning the holidays stems from a general discontent with our circumstances. We continually think, “When I get a job, I will be satisfied,” or, “If I can just get my GPA up a point or two, I will be the perfect student,” or my personal favorite, “If I could just get a boyfriend, I will be happy.”
   Our fixation with holiday cheer is a thinly-veiled attempt to gain temporary happiness, the magic of which will fade away as soon as the snow melts — or as is the case for us Mississippians, when the artificial snow is vacuumed from the carpet. The heat will inevitably set in, and our winter sparkle will give way to allergy season and summer sweat once more. And as the season’s transition, we will neglect March’s chilly wetness in our eagerness for April’s flowers and May’s glorious warmth in our fervor for June’s sun-soaked lethargy, just as we neglect November right now.
   Our disregard for these in-between months is a symptom of a greater problem. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “We are always getting ready to live but never living.” If we would only seize each day, regardless of the month, I believe we would find life much more fulfilling as well as, dare I say it, happier. Happiness is a fleeting thing, a completely circumstantial sentiment. If we equate happiness with a holiday cup at Starbucks or in the Christmas wreaths on Main Street, it is certain to abandon us come January. But if we choose to see the beauty in every day, all throughout the year, the joy so often associated with Christmas never has to fade.