And so it begins.

That mad holiday scramble starts this week with the lead up to Thanksgiving. There will be the food preparation, the travel, family reunions, gift-giving collusions and sibling collisions.

No sooner will the turkey-induced lassitude begin to pass than the midnight madness and door-buster holiday shopping bargains beckon. Some stores offered "black Friday sales" a week before the true post-Thanksgiving black Friday. Tradition, apparently, be hanged when it comes to making a buck in a tough economy.

For many wallets are thinner, credit margins tighter and financial anxieties keener. But who wants to disappoint the kids, or grandpa? So shop people will, whether they can afford it or not.

For many the season seems to fly. Decorations to retrieve and display, trees to be cut down, or unboxed. The parties, the school pageants, "A Christmas Carol," "The Nutcracker," Hanukkah candles alight Dec. 11. With each trip to the malls or scan of the Internet names are scratched off the gift list - or deleted from the iPhone. But who is being forgotten?

Donations collect at food distribution centers as they do at no other time of the year. The lists of those in need are longer and so too the register of families seeking help to place toys under the tree. The task is enormous, but somehow charitable spirits and tireless volunteers get it done.

While full of activity and gatherings for most, it is a time also acutely lonely for others. Busy schedules must accommodate them.

For some it is a spiritual season, for others a secular celebration. But it is everywhere, seemingly inescapable, at times overwhelming.

Snow that will be despised come late February is welcomed mid-December for setting the proper ambience, but please not too much to interfere with the shopping and travel.

This mad rush from Thanksgiving to Christmas is uniquely American. Is it too much, too commercial, too demanding? Probably all of those things. But what else to expect from a society that seemingly never does anything in moderation.

So embrace it, enjoy the spectacle, have a good laugh over the sheer lunacy of it all.

There will be time to catch up on rest during the long, cold winter that follows.