Oh, the weather outside is frightful....

What's that purple thing going Ohhh Noooo!?

Ooogh. Gotta go to bed. As Tank Girl once said, it's been swell but the swellins' gone down.

Costco Amagasaki has had the Christmas stuff up since late August :-D

Hadn't noticed any Christmas stuff being laid out in the stores out here yet, but I suspect I will pretty soon.

i love Christmas. Love it, love, it, love it. I'm hosting this year and have been planning the menu for months... but...

Come on! Now is the time to get excited about ghosts and goblins, not Santa and Baby Jesus!!!

The one exception is crafts stores, since some crafts take a couple months to make and people need to get started now...

Holy crap! By which I mean Christmas is a holy day and that's crap.

Cracker Barrel has Christmas trees up almost year around now. They also had the Halloween stuff out before Labor Day, too.

You know, there are still 2 more major National Holidays left before Christmas. What happened to Halloween and Thanksgiving? Especially Thanksgiving. Poor old Thanksgiving always gets left out. I don't think I have seen anything for Thanksgiving since I was a kid. Do you even see that much Halloween stuff out now a days either? It seems like we go straight from 4th of July to Christmas.

Disgusting. More disgusting is that so many stores profit from it while refusing to allow their employees to say "Merry Christmas" or even "Happy Hanukkah" for fear of offending some poor soul.

Christmas sales and election campaigns should both be limited to one month before the actual day.

Brian is right. It's too early, overdone, and in poor taste. There is nothing like making one sick of a holiday long before it actually arrives.

Retailers, here's a hint. I'm not buying anything except Halloween candy until mid November at the earliest. So, if you want something to catch my interest, instead of eliciting a "meh, I've seen that 37 times already" please wait. It's going to work better for both of us.

I remember Tim Burton saying he got the inspiration for Nightmare Before Christmas while watching a Halloween display being taken out of a window and a Chirstmas one being moved in simultaneously. Just imagine, it could have been the Labor Day of Christmas - elves going on strike and demanding better wages, Santa sending in Pinkertons and strikebreakers.

Still, this is about the right time of year for places like Michaels to start putting out Xmas stuff. I've never gone for any of the stuff I found in the Xmas aisles granted (I prefer needlework to hotglued tchotchkies).

Hmm. It must be after Memorial Day.

I don't believe stores would waste floor space on items that don't move. Someone wants it. I've seen people who put up the tree at Thanksgiving and take it down in March. It was a real tree too. Pretty sad by the end.

Make it stop, I'm begging someone. The Holiday Season is awful enough, but when retailers do this, it seems to put pressure on all of us to have the "perfect" Holiday. Why not? You've had since AUGUST to get ready, damnit! I cannot stand the Christmas season, and this is in large part why. I don't like merriment being shoved down my throat when I go to get shampoo in mid-October. The only thing that keeps me from drinking an entire moat of eggnog (spiked!) during December is that I have two kids, and I try my hardest to make it fun for them. They can figure out that the Holidays are Hell when they get older. Viva la Scrooge.

Gregg Easterbrook, who goes by the handle "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" has a running item in his colun on espn.com on the phenomenon of "Christmas Creep." Most of the items are both amusing/cringe-worthy in equal doses. I'd prefer some kind of social consensus that we can't start advertising/preparing for Christmas until Thanksgiving concludes. Of course, that would give us Canadians an extra month and a half of Christmasy "goodness."

Err, makes that "column" in the 2nd line.

I love the Christmas season, but when they drag it out it loses its specialness. I love the Halloween season and want to enjoy it, too.

When I asked someone why he put up Christmas decorations in September, he replied that the months of September, October, November and December all ended in -ber, so that was the reason why the Christmas decorations went up as early as September. I don't know if he was serious or not.

Come on! Now is the time to get excited about ghosts and goblins, not Santa and Baby Jesus!!!

Can we combine the two with Zombie Jesus decorations?

Nordstom's never decorates for Christmas until after Thanksgiving.

@ monicaP

That would be Easter. Let's not drag out another holiday season into infinity.

I just noticed that my little fake Christmas tree is still up...from two years ago.

I don't see Christmas stuff in the stores yet. There is a huge a mount of Halloween stuff in the stores. There are even special Halloween stores opening up.

I've gotten to the point I don't give a crap about holidays other than I get an extra day off on occasion.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday -- It's a day about being with friends (and sometimes family. ;-) ). You can enjoy it without worrying about gifts. I enjoy being the cook to put it all together.

Well, I've been through more holiday seasons than most of you, if I understand the demographic here as well as I think I do, and here's some news: I can remember when I was a kid in the 60's, people were complaining that Christmas was starting too soon, and the decorations were up - gasp - before Hallowe'en.

Meh. It's not gonna change. Retailers are going to do what they think (and apparently what time has proven) will make them money. And maybe we should be glad of that. Every dollar earned from people who WANT to spend it, is a dollar that isn't taken out of our pockets by gubmint, by force.

As far as the "Merry Christmas"/"Happy Holidays" is concerned, I think we miss the point. Retail employees don't really care what kind of holiday we have, any more than we lay awake at night worrying about theirs. It's JUST a greeting! It's NOT a statement on anybody's religion, and why is it necessary to recognize any particular religion in a secular setting, anyway? Surely we can find something else to get worked up over (see Amy's column about the USDA Dietary recommendations - now there's something to get excited about!)

I hate Christmas. I hate it even more when it starts in September...

The only upside here is that I LOVE Halloween, and by October 1 all the Halloween stuff is 1/2 off as they move it out for Christmas.