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Editorial

Let the Holidays Begin!

No, we’re not rushing the season. If you’re reading this paper its first day on the streets, Thursday, Nov. 15, Thanksgiving is only a week away. If you’re reading later, Thanksgiving is sooner.

The lives we live are so full and rushed that time is always getting the jump on us. It couldn’t be that time already, we lament.

Yet autumn is all around us. Flowers have faded, but trees are dressed in bright colors. Geese vee the skies and call their glee down to us. Rockfish hug the shorelines. Pumpkins are waiting to be made into pies.

If you’re not going to give into the spirit of the season now, when will you?

Thanksgiving wants nothing to do with our money. It’s the opposite of Christmas, when commercialism can — if we let it — get out of hand. All Thanksgiving asks of us is to review and acknowledge the blessings of the past year. If we can do so over the symbolism of a bountiful table, in the company of family and friends, so much the better.

To that feast, Bay Weekly annually dedicates our pre-Thanksgiving issue. Perhaps you’ll find in these pages a recipe or a point of view to enhance your holiday. Perhaps, as you toil in your kitchen to prepare the feast, you’ll escape for a few minutes, put your feet up and let Margaret Tearman entertain you with the notion that you could forget it all and go out for Thanksgiving dinner. Perhaps you’ll be warmed by the light we shine on the traditions — and innovations — of other families.

You’ll find all that and much more in this issue of Bay Weekly. Yet we think of this week’s paper as the wrapping on the gift inside. For special in this week’s paper is our annual Indispensable Guide to Winter Holiday Fun. We call it Local Bounty, for it harvests the happenings our community creates to transform the next six weeks from the gray, dark and chilly days of early winter into an illuminated season of warmth and rejoicing.

Starting on Thanksgiving Day, the turkey chase — Camp Letts’ 10K race or 5K run/walk — gets us in shape for all the food we’re bound to consume. Then — as darkness falls earlier each evening and lingers later each morning — the lights go on. Local Bounty guides you to illuminations throughout Chesapeake Country as far as Ocean City to Baltimore and D.C. In their glow, trains travel to miniature villages, Scrooge learns his lesson, Clara dreams the Nutcracker’s journey — and Santa shows his lightning speed, appearing seemingly everywhere at once.

For every day from Nov. 15 through Jan. 1 — and a couple beyond — Local Bounty brings news of fun and festivities to you and your family.

We don’t think it’s possible to read far into Local Bounty without catching the holiday spirit. It’s not a bah-humbug kind of book.

But don’t take our word for it. See for yourself.

And remember to keep your copy of Local Bounty close at hand; we print it only once a year, but it’s indispensable from now till the New Year.