I sometimes mention that my favorite season is “citrus” when the topic comes up. It’s a joke but also very true. Southern California doesn’t have nearly as much seasonal weather variation as my home state of Nebraska so my wife and I find other ways to mark the changes, most notably with food. We primarily buy produce in season from the farmer’s market, and the citrus in February through March is absolutely wonderful.

I bring this up because I’ve noticed a few disconcerting trends in Los Angeles. In October you’ll see “fall festival” tents pop up in parking lots around town with hay bales, pumpkins to buy, and perhaps a couple of inflatables for kids to play in. Sometime between Halloween and thanksgiving the pumpkins and hay bales are replaced with piles of similarly out-of-place Christmas trees. I can’t help but lament that we seem unable to celebrate the things we have, and instead try to force a template on ourselves even when it doesn’t really make sense.

One of these years I think we need to start a tradition of celebrating Pomegranate Days and Citrus Season like the holidays they deserve to be.