If you pay attention to news from around the retailing world, you might know that Sam’s Club already has Christmas displays out. Their excuse is that they had some empty space in their warehouse from departments that were nearly sold out and empty square footage is area that’s not making any money. So if you think that the Christmas selling season starts sooner every year, it’s not just you. This is retailers trying to squeeze the maximum amount of profit they can out of the holiday shopping season even during a time of year when they might still be able to sell a few more lawn chairs.

It’s not that the online world isn’t also guilty of this. Bloggers who rely on affiliate sales for an income usually spend much of July and August creating Top Ten lists of this year’s hottest gadgets because they know shoppers are going to be looking for them in November and December. I’ve got a few sales blog entries that probably could use some sprucing up, too, and of course I have affiliate links tacked onto the bottom of most of my articles. It’s just that I’m not Santa Claus. I don’t spend the whole year getting my blog ready for one short sales season. If you’ve paid attention to this blog and Bitcoin On Mars at all, you know I have things to think about other than Christmas.

I try not to be too “Bah Humbug” about it. It’s pretty easy for me to just give everybody gift cards for Christmas every year. At most, I’ll probably joke a bit about geeks at Christmas. I just like to enjoy September and part of October before the holidays really get rolling. We should at least get Halloween out of the way before the Christmas displays go up. Otherwise, things just get too cluttered.

I’ve also kind of felt bad for the people who have been raised in a religious tradition other than Christianity. I mean, Christmas is friggin’ everywhere even if you don’t see quite as many Nativity displays in front of courthouses anymore. Christmas music is playing on all the radio stations and, while there are Christmas songs that are actually good enough to listen to at any time of year, there are only so many renditions of “Frosty the Snowman” I can take before I turn the radio off. Even when you aren’t one of those people who files a lawsuit at the drop of a Feliz Navidad, it must sting on some level. Would it really hurt to put up a few Hannukah displays too?

There isn’t much I can tell people that would help except to not buy any Christmas decorations until the middle of November. It gets down to the square footage thing again. Retailers will notice if the Christmas section suddenly becomes the least profitable part of their stores until after the post-Halloween candy sales are over. Even when you tell your kids to ration their Trick-or-Treat goodies so they don’t get stomach aches, it will probably be gone by the time you need to think about Christmas shopping. Oh, and I do recommend doing at least part of your holiday shopping online this year, and early enough that we don’t have what happened last year with some packages not being delivered on time. Maybe after about five years of low sales of Christmas items in October, retailers will take the hint and do a better job of delivering the holiday goodies one holiday at a time.

The One Holiday Gift That Can’t Fail

Gift Cards. Never worry about your gift being exchanged because it didn’t fit again.

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