You know that little Garrison Keillor-esque remark in the entry below, about that magical transition from a fall season that has long since grown cold and stale to the festivity and resplendence of the holiday season, where the smell of burnt leaves is supplanted by the smell of pine and peppermint?

Well, guess what. It’s too early for festivity and resplendence right now. We don’t want to smell any pine and peppermint. We don’t want eggnog in our lattes; we’ll take them the usual way. We don’t want to hear sleigh bells and see flashing red and green lights. We don’t want to hear any of the following musical compositions: “Jingle Bells,” “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” the piano solo “Christmastime is Here” from Charlie Brown, or any part of “The Nutcracker Suite.” And frankly, I could do just fine not just for now, but for the entire holiday season, without hearing “Jingle Bell Rock,” “Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree,” “Sleigh Ride,” or any of Mannheim Steamroller’s Muzak-ified Christmas classics. But this isn’t about good Christmas music and bad Christmas music. It’s about the fact that right now, it’s too early for any Christmas music at all.
That’s because IT’S NOT CHRISTMAS!
Yes, there are some retailers that are rolling out their holiday advertising campaigns already. It started the very minute the calendar hit November 1, now that Halloween is over. When orange and black are out, red and green are in. When “Monster Mash” and “Werewolves of London” are out, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Here Comes Santy Claus” are in. (No, that’s not a typo. Listen to the Gene Autry original sometime.) Compared with Halloween and Christmas, Thanksgiving isn’t as marketable a holiday all about staying home and gorging yourself with your family. New Christmas music comes out all the time, and most of the best-known Christmas pop music is from the mid-20th century. But the only well-known Thanksgiving song is “Over the River and through the Wood,” which dates from 1844.
But still. Come on, people. It’s not Christmas.

There may well be a marketing advantage to planting the seed of Christmas earlier and earlier every year. Lengthening the shopping season means more sales and more profits, particularly in an economy where retailers have to offset the loss of sales due to thriftier shoppers. But the price of that boon for the retail industry is that we all get sick of it. By the time Christmas comes around, we’re ready for it to be February. There’s no festivity and resplendence. We’ve all been so saturated and smothered with the holiday spirit that we’d like to change the words to the grossly overused “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” to “It’s the Most Horrible Time of the Year:”
Sample lyrics: “It’s the most horrible time of the year / Why do I have to listen to ‘Grandma Got Run over By a Reindeer? / It’s the most horrible time of the year. ’
’Twas the hap-happiest season of all. / But then all the retailers and all the junk-mailers, they took away fall. …”

The holiday season comes after Thanksgiving. Let us just enjoy fall for now, OK? It hasn't even snowed yet.

Despite the fact that it's not Christmas, Santas are singing at the Mall of America and posing with pets in Milwaukee.

I'll bet within a few years, holiday ads and Christmas music will start in September, the minute the kids are back in school. And before we know it, they'll be telling us early in the morning on December 26 to hurry up and start shopping for Christmas of the following year.