Five Signs Christmas is Here Too Early

Remember in the good old days when you and your parents threw on whatever jackets were necessary (hey, we live in Louisiana so sometimes you didn't wear one) and tread out to one of the tents that sold all the trees on the corner. You always knew it was time to buy when the tents showed up. In South Dakota, they went on sale two weeks ago. How in the heck do you keep a tree alive for two months after it's been cut down?

I know many of you will not believe this, but people WILL get tired of Christmas music. Just look at how sick people are of that darned Sarah McLaughlin song about the dogs. No wonder suicide rates go up. One store in Canada, Shoppers Drug Mart, pulled Christmas music from its 1,200 stores after complaints. They then posted the reason on their FB page. The posting has drawn more than 7,300 "likes" and almost 6,000 comments as of Monday morning, the majority of them positive.

During the Great Depression President Roosevelt was concerned people weren't spending money so he had Thanksgiving moved from the 4th Thursday to the 3rd Thursday thinking that having an earlier Thanksgiving would expand the Christmas shopping season. What he didn't do was move it back to November 1. I understand the economy sucks but what would an extra week do? Target started airing Christmas ads in October. One online survey told stores that America isn't ready for Christmas yet and to focus on their online presence instead.

This country needs some good old school, old fashioned, old world family time. No other holiday does that better than Thanksgiving. Old recipes, family, friends and a little hope that things will be better if we just stick together. This country and its people were founded by the folks that started Thanksgiving and I can't see why the dollars and cents of holiday shopping should trump that.

Halloween started in September, Thanksgiving started on Halloween, Christmas songs and decorations were up DURING Halloween. I'm afraid with all this holiday push back, we'll be having New Years Day sometime in November next year. If that's the case, can we move up the 2016 elections to next year too?