Reality Check

We don't know where we get it, we don't know where it comes from, but lots of us will stumble over this holiday illusion: "There is one right way to celebrate the holiday season!"

This one's sneaky. It comes to us through images, songs and Christmas cards. It rears up between newly married couples, as they try to blend his way and her way and make their own way in the face of competing in-laws.

You'll see it working in tear-in-eye TV commercials: a happy multi-generational family (all in attractive, color-coordinated sweaters) gathers round a flickering fire.

A groaning table sits beyond, crowned with a glistening turkey. Angelic, shining-haired children lean breathlessly on Grandpa's knee. Mom and Grandma trade good-natured looks over their work in the bustling kitchen--and outside, it's snowing in the starlight.

Yeah, right.

Ah, September! The month brings brisk mornings, fall colors, back-to-school ... and deck the halls?

In a word, yes. September is the perfect time to think ahead to the holiday season; start Christmas planning now, and you'll reap abundant benefits come December.

Here at Organized Christmas we hear a deafening chorus of objection: "But it's too early to think about Christmas! I can't get ready until I feel the holiday spirit!"

Citing "Christmas creep"--the tendency of retail stores to display holiday merchandise while it's still summer--many people resist the idea of starting early for an organized Christmas.

So why begin Christmas organizing early--and without the benefit of holiday sentiment? Here are six reasons why starting now makes sense--and will help you have more holiday joy, less holiday stress come December:

Who knows why? How did it happen? Women--wives and mothers--have come to bear the brunt of holiday preparation.

It's enough to make Barry Manilow sing! Women plan the meals, list the gifts and shop until we drop. We cook, we clean, we decorate--and we wrap and wrap and wrap.

Our hands cramp from addressing Christmas cards. We go short on sleep to run the sewing machine late into the night. We rise before dawn to anoint the holiday bird and entrust it to the oven.

Too often, we stew and mutter in our devastated kitchens as we clean up after yet another holiday meal to the sounds of football festivity in the next room.

Judging from my e-mail, what's the single biggest holiday family conundrum? "Whose house for the holidays?" wins, hands down.

It's a universal dilemma for young parents. It's a universal dilemma for their own parents. Where will the "children" spend the holidays?

Shiny new parents of a baby or two yearn to create their own at-home holiday. Their own parents struggle to keep the family together, and preferably at their house.

My own chair sits smack dab in the middle. My children are grown, and I'm a grandmother of a young grandsons.

Yet I remember (far, far too well) the days of traveling 450 miles one-way in a rackety VW bus with babies in tow, to make the required (and resented) attendance at an in-law's home.

Add divorce, remarriage, step- and blended families, and this issue can become a logistical nightmare.

How do you solve the "whose house for the holidays" question ... and keep the cheer in the season?