This is a no-bitching zone this Hallothanksmas

I'm not bitching about the holidays this year. Period.

You know the usual complaints: Stores' Christmas displays are up too early. From Halloween to New Year's is one long, gluttonous gorgefest. There's too much stress. How come they call those tiny Hersey bars "fun-sized?" Everything's too commercialized. I just can't get into the holiday spirit. My neighbor's motion-detecting animatronic witch shrieks every time a bunny hops across the lawn, to be followed by his animatronic Santa ho-ho-ho-ing on the same cue. (Come to think of it, the neighbors may be animatronic, too; all I ever see them do is mow the lawn, pick the paper up from their porch and walk to and from their car.)

Not only has the Christ been taken out of Christmas, but the Hallowed has been taken from Halloween and the Thanks from Thanksgiving.

Well, big deal. I'm taking myself by the scruff of my neck and slapping myself across the face and saying, "Self -- buck up, quit whining." Instead of acting like it's a burden, I'm embracing the last quarter of the year as one big single holiday -- Hallothanksmas. A three-month holiday that captures so much that's great about life: Chocolate, family, wonderful food, appreciating the many blessings of life, pie, Christmas songs silly and profound that everyone sings even if they can't hit a single note, happy (albeit sugar-stoked) children, giving and receiving, the birth of a baby who saved the world. And chocolate. Did I mention chocolate?

Of course it's Too Much. We Americans are not exactly known for a subtle, light touch in anything we do, are we?

Take the house I pass a half-dozen times a week -- every neighborhood has at least one of these. These people get their decorating freak on for all of the major holidays, covering every square inch of their property with kitschy crap. It looks like an accident scene, as if a Nobbies supply plane, in an incredible coincidence, fell out of the sky atop a Nobbies truck right in their front yard. (Nobbies, for you non-eastern-Nebraskans, is an Omaha holiday decor emporium; to wander its aisles is to fall into a Martha Stewart nightmare, the one she has when she secretly pounds down a Domino's pizza and a box of Ho-Hos after midnight. )

I used to look down my nose at people like this. How gauche. But a couple of years ago, I noticed something: Every time I passed this house, I smiled. Not a sarcastic, sneering smile. No, one of those smiles that came from happiness. Imagine that. Given that just about everything else I see while driving makes my jaw tighten, I now look forward to passing this monument to tacky joy.

(Lest I sound too much like a Dr. Seuss redemption project whose heart grew three times and whose good taste shrunk by half that day, let me be clear: I don't want to live next door to these people; I just like driving by their house.)

I suspect that people who decorate like this are having more fun than I and, even more important, spreading more joy than I. They're the only ones in their office who dress in costume on Halloween, and they don't care what people think. They prepare three full Thanksgiving meals because they're hosting three different gatherings, or they're experimenting with a new way to cook a turkey but aren't about to leave the old ways behind, or they're providing a meal to strangers. They organize Christmas caroling outings. They bake an obscene amount of cookies. They laugh every time they hear "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." They are spreaders of holiday spirit, not suckers of it.

I think I'd like to be more like these people, but it may not be in me. For instance, my cats are the only ones this week who will see how fabulous I look in my Lady Gaga costume.

But I can do my part this holiday season. I can be more prayerful, thankful and accepting and less cynical, judgmental and obsessed with that which doesn't matter. I can be more joyful because joy is so much more fun than woe. I can quit sneaking over to the neighbors' and inappropriately reposing their Halloween displays. I can quit searching for the holiday spirit as if it's a commodity and simply be open to it popping up in my life when and where I least expect it. And, by God, I can eat one helluva lot of chocolate.

Happy Hallothanksmas, all!