It's most wonderful time... well, it already has been being the most wonderful time...

With still a couple days until Thanksgiving the Xmas specials have already commenced (interestingly, with a new animated show featuring characters from the movie Madagascar). This isn't that bad, all things considered. Heck, some stores have had holiday-themed displays up for months.

I know people who lament this stretching of the season—and by that I mean the shopping season—out for such a period; I have been one of them. It seems like the stores are striving to shove Xmas down our throats before Labor Day.

While the dismay has been directed at the merchants who start the pattern earlier than we remember it when we were young, the vitriol would seem to be better directed toward the people who actually buy these holiday-themed items in August. If the stores weren't making money putting that merchandise out when they were they wouldn't do it. Economics trump all other considerations.

However, it's too blithe to blame those who have their shopping completed before Halloween. Any such ill will about them is probably more envy that they don't procrastinate like us combined with the romanticized vision we have of hitting the shops when there's at least a chill in the air (or, here in SoCal, when we have to stop wearing open-toed shoes). They aren't upholding the tradition, and Xmas, moreso than any other holiday, benefits from tradition (or at least the appearance of tradition).

Here's the thing: Our children will grow up in a world where they will only know the holiday shopping season to run a majority of the year. That will be their "tradition." And someday when we tell our grandchildren how shopping for Xmas didn't just last all year round they will look at us blankly, and ask us to tell them again about Xmas trees were actual objects and not merely holograms.

~

No other holiday ever came up with such ripe marketing potential. It was naïve to think it wouldn't be exploited to a greater and greater degree.

Don't blame Xmas. Blame all the other holidays for not coming up with anything to compete with its potential and give the stores something else to drive in to the ground at other times of year, something that would give people who really like Xmas another part of the year to look forward to.

Something to stimulate the economy without stores resorting to touting Xmas in summer.

Whether people could afford two of those a year is another story, especially these days. So anyone thinking of trying that alternate Xmas may be best served to wait for things to get better financially.

Timing is everything.