No longer timely, but I want to go on record:

You know how department stores and marketers supposedly try to trot Christmas out earlier and earlier every year? Every year, one of your older relatives will come home from a trip to Crate and Freaking Barrel (to buy the Trading Spaces Home Collection’s Automatic S’more Maker Cleaner and Fondue Set Cozy) and sigh, “Lordy, they had out the Christmas trees! Right out front, they were, plain as you please. Wreathes and Santas and whatnot already out for sale, with the Columbus Day decorations not even taken down yet. Lordy. There oughtta be a law. It gets a little less special every year, by cracky.”

Well, Aunt Getrude is right. Christmas is probably starting just a little earlier every year. And that is great, so you can tell her from me to zip it up.

I couldn’t care less if retailers are just trying to milk a few more dollars out of me (my wife has rendered that feat quite impossible). I love Christmas, if memory serves, but every year since the yoke of the working man has been placed on my stooped shoulders the holiday season has passed faster and faster. The idea of the old childhood Advent calendar that never seemed to count down the days fast enough seems like some kind of absurd joke to me now; I wouldn’t even have time to put the candy behind the little doors. Last year, the entire winter passed in the time it took me to wish one person well. “Happy Thanksmastine’s Day!”

If this year is anything like the last few, I expect that I’ll realize on the 22nd that I never got around to taking out the Christmas CDs and think, “Well, if I’m going to spend any part of my favorite time of year enjoying myself, I’d better get the Christmas spirit right now,” and then undergo the psychological equivalent of trying to grow a beard by tomorrow. If creeping the Holiday Season starting line up a few feet gives me a chance to take a breath and drink some damn nog, then I hope they start in September next year, how d’ya like them apples, Gertrude? Let’s make it August and stretch our legs a bit. Burl Ives’ estate could use the money.

Now, the bitching about it every year, that I wish would start a little later. “Holy Jesus Almighty! They’re a’gonna make us think about sugarplums and happy children for three extra weeks a year; these must be the End Times. People selling goods and services under the guise of joy to the world and peace on earth; this is the worst thing that has ever happened to the culture. What ever happened to Veteran’s Day? What ever happened to Grammy fever?”