For the 73rd time in history and for the 28th time since I was born, Santa Claus and all of his reindeer paraded down Broadway at the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade this week to officially kick off the holiday season – and I could care less.

For the first time in my life, I have no holiday spirit at all. I have absolutely no desire to deck the halls with bows of holly, pass around the coffee and the pumpkin pie, or hear sleigh bells jingling or ring ting tingling. In the past, I would usually get into the Christmas spirit around August – and now, Christmas is less than 30 days away and I feel like it’s December 26th.

Normally, I would spend the weekend after Thanksgiving putting on my Christmas hat and playing my Christmas music and watching my Christmas videos while I put my Christmas tree together and then decorate the tree with my lights and ornaments I had since I was twelve. Then, when I was done, I would place the manger my family had for over thirty years and my little Christmas village underneath my tree. The last thing I would do is put up the stocking I had since I was a bay and place my little Christmas mementos I had acquired over twenty-eight Christmases all over the house – but this year, none of that is possible – because not having my tree, lights, ornaments, hat, stocking, manger, village, music, videos, or mementos for the first time in my life makes it a little difficult to get into the spirit of the season.

It has been suggested to me that all I have to do is purchase a new tree and new ornaments and then, somehow, the spirit of the holiday will miraculously appear – I think not – because while there are some lovely ornaments and trees out there – no ornament can replace the ones I made when I was twelve, no manger can replace the one I grew up with, and no stocking is the one I ran to on Christmas morning all my life – so there goes that.

There are less than 30 days left until it will be Christmas Day, and very soon every store and house will be covered in holiday decorations and every television and radio station will endlessly play Christmas music, specials and commercials – but none of that matters to me – because no matter how hard I try, I don’t feel like it’s Christmas time in the City.

If I ever needed a Christmas miracle – it’s now.