Merry October!

A few weeks ago a friend of mine sent me a disgusted text:

I am at Target and the Christmas decorations are already out.

I probably would have been a little more surprised and slightly disgusted to hear of Christmas decorations for sale in September if I had not seen the Kmart commercial for Christmas lay-aways several weeks before that.

Forget Christmas in July sales.  It is now Christmas in July, August, September, October and November.  Pretty soon we will just skip these months and have six months of December.

A few years ago a local radio station began playing all Christmas music on November 1.  The Hallmark channel will be switching to holiday programming on October 31.  Personally I would rather get my Halloween decorations put away before I start hearing The First Noel and Jingle Bells.

The Today Show had a report this morning that said 26 percent of people have already begun holiday shopping.  They featured a woman who was already done with all her shopping and is in the process of wrapping gifts.

I have to admit that I already have few things purchased.  If I see something in a catalog that I know a family member would like, I will get order it before it runs out of stock or, a more likely scenario, I will have forgotten about it.  But will I be finished before those Black Friday sales begin?  I doubt it.

There is something about being part of that holiday rush that puts me in the Christmas spirit.  Warm weather and Christmas shopping just don't go together as far as I am concerned.

So even though I hope to have the bulk of my shopping complete before Thanksgiving, it wouldn't be the holidays without being part of that Christmas shopping crunch, for better or worse.

Let's give Halloween and Thanksgiving a little respect and keep Silent Night and eggnog to a minimum until then. Lest I turn into the Grinch long before December.