Hark! Hear ye:Thanksgiving is here, but all I can hear slipping into my ears are songs of Christmas, of holly, of cheer. These songs fill our faces with smiles or tears as we recall our childhood dreams and fears. They set our hearts awash or ablaze with nostalgic moods of joy or malaise. But it reminds me of a question that in our minds fades about the place of the pumpkin today.Is it the dessert of our Thanksgiving dine, arriving after the meal in the shape of a pie? Or is it the molded clay of a scarier day, filled with candy and fire made to scare ghosts away? It doesn’t matter which way it is played, for it is safe to say that it retains no place on the table today. Without being carved, hollowed and lit and placed on our doorsteps in October to sit, it finds itself without a niche in the sense that it was once a symbol of all that Thanksgiving-ness but now nothing more than a prop for a kid.Our symbols lose meaning as they become nothing more than pop culture, like a corpse after the feast of a vulture. As poor as rhythm of this piece seems to flow, we can’t keep giving our holidays these blows. Because nothing can stand for what it once did, and there are no restraints, no limits, no lid.Christmas music begins months too soon, and pumpkins are forgotten after the moon has gone down on the night that children take flight in costumes on their perilous plight to gain all the candy they have in their sights.But I suppose it’s time I quit this rhyme that isn’t as divine as others of its kind. It’s annoying as hearing “Silent Night” when the sun still beats down with rays of hot light. But as we take a step back into prose, remember, and show no repose, we celebrate the things we hold dear, even if it isn’t the right time of year. But let that be a choice we make, not one for the radio stations to state.Because, as much as we get excited hearing Christmas music in March (and as annoyed as we get at columns saying we should wait on our holiday tunes), it creates a culture of symbolic ignorance.The pumpkin retains no place in our holiday history now. What was once a symbol of autumn and Thanksgiving was transformed into a symbol of Halloween. It retained both until Christmas music started blasting out of our car speakers on All Saints Day.Now it has no place—a veritable holiday ewok.And, now, many (including myself) see Thanksgiving not as a peaceful time to spend with family and friends, but as a quick break and a prelude to Christmas. If the entire time we are attempting to celebrate Thanksgiving we see Christmas symbols and decorations, then we are going to be celebrating the future arrival of Christmas instead of our intended holiday.Which may not be bad.Which may be great.That, like most things written in opinion columns, depends on who you are and what you like.Because there is nothing inherently wrong with Christmas in my eyes. I’m not trying to be a Grinch or a Scrooge or any of that jazz. But early Christmas music represents a culture that is never happy with what they have and are always looking ahead to what comes next. We need to stop and smell the turkey every once in a while — enjoying our holiday for what it is rather than what it will be.Anyway, I fear that one day XM radio will follow all of the easy listening FM ones and offer an all-Christmas station. And that’ll be about as monotonous as the all-AC/DC station, which essentially sounds like the opening guitar and yell to “Thunderstruck” about 24 hours a day, seven days a week.I know all of us can use our first recess this year since Gustav ravaged our fair campus, taking away both our power lines and our fall break. So let’s all go home and enjoy it.We need to take this time to heart. We need to see the people we love in cozy, warm houses with flickering fires or warm heaters, wrapped in the plush blanket of family, friends and an actual blanket. It’s been a rough semester, one we’ve all been through together, like it or not. So enjoy your break.And while we’re there, keep a lookout for pumpkins.I bet you won’t find many. At least not amid all the Christmas tunes.—-Contact Travis Andrews at [email protected]