You know, I get annoyed by the too-early Christmas displays in stores, too. I mean, I understand people do actually want, maybe even need, this stuff before December first. Every year I send off a package to the States in mid-November, and many’s the time I’ve found I didn’t have enough wrapping paper to finish the job. So, assuming sending Christmas presents in silver paper with gold wedding bells, or baby-gift paper with pink and blue bunny rabbits, would just not go over well, and I think that’s a safe assumption, I’m off to the store to buy more Christmas wrapping paper and tags, and I’m grateful that the store carries it so far ahead of time. So I’m glad this stuff is around, but I don’t think it needs to be placed in the center aisle, and certainly not accompanied by Christmas carols while there are still leaves on the trees. Put a small selection along the back wall, and we who need it will find it. Desperation will drive us there.
However… it seems to me that we’re pitting the wrong end of the problem here. The source of the red-covered tables blocking the easy routes through every store, and the ads telling you that this and that makes great Christmas gifts when the calendar still reads September, and the tinny version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer assaulting your ears in every fucking store every thirty fucking minutes for two fucking months straight… the source of all that isn’t some conspiracy by retailers, as much as it may feel that way. It also isn’t the people who have everything ready for Christmas by the first of December, including artistically wrapped presents and sixteen different types of homemade goodies for all their friends, co-workers, neighbors, and kids’ teachers including the school secretary and custodians, however easy it is to hate people like that. (Well… kudos to them for remembering the school secretary and custodians, anyway.) The real cause of the problem is the number of people who have bought the advertisers’ message that Christmas is about things.
No, you’re not going to get a Put The Christ Back In Christmas lecture from me. It wouldn’t be fitting, seeing as how I’m an atheist and all. What I’m saying is that if people really believed Christmas was a religious holiday, or a family holiday, or a time for old traditions, or any of those things… and that the presents and decorations and music and food were just trappings to help us celebrate… then things wouldn’t be this bad. They haven’t always been this bad, after all.
But when people started to buy the idea that Christmas is about giving the biggest presents, and having the most elaborately decorated house, and offering the fanciest food to guests and hosting the most elegant parties, when it went from a holiday to a competitive sport, that’s when things got out of control and we lost the rhythm of the seasons that mid-winter holidays were invented to celebrate in the first place. Retailers wanted this, so sure, we can pit them, but they wouldn’t have succeeded if people hadn’t been so willing to listen to their message. For that, I’m afraid we’ll have to pit a large portion of the population of all those countries where Christmas is the major holiday.
Fortunately, I think we’re up to that challenge. 
see, the cool guy is orange, baby!