Is it just me or are companies already hinting the Christmas season with their advertisements, in July? I don’t usually pay attention to television ads but I caught the end of one a few minutes ago where I swear the actors in it were dressed as Santa’s Elves. In July.I think a lot of us have mentioned(complained?) how early Christmas begins every year. It seems by the first week in October, the television ads really begin, but then are competing with Halloween for a week or two and then there’s really nothing stopping it at all.

I have a friend that wanted to put up a tree in his home in, yes, July. I think his wife convinced him it was just a little bit too early. I’m not saying my friend is a kook, but some people do become a little obsessed with the holiday. None of this is about the birth of Jesus (my friend, by the way, is a Pastor), but more of the commercial end of it. You know, the three wisemen. Had there been no gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, would this be the preeminent day of Christianity? Of course, no real theologist believes Jesus was born, mid-winter, with popsicle Shepards guarding their frozen lamb chops.

Most of the same people, as well as others, know that there used to be a pagan holiday during December known as Saturnalia and is the reason Christian bishops placed the birth of Jesus during that time was to usurp a traditional holiday time. When was Jesus born, if he really existed at all? No one knows but best guesses amongst the apologia are anywhere between April and June. So why not just move the holiday to sometime in that period?Christmas wasn’t even declared a Federal holiday until June 26, 1870, so although tradition goes back about 1500 years more, would we have really missed the holiday?

When my parents were growing up, Christmas was celebrated with a lot less splash than when I was a kid. My Dad really loved the season even though as a kid himself, his parents barely had enough to scrape together any presents for the kids which usually consisted of a paper sack with a piece of fruit, some nuts, and a piece of hard rock candy or two. Imagine the look on your kids faces today if they woke up to that under the tree. Revolution.

I’d prefer to see Christmas pushed back to it’s traditional time with the commercial season beginning on the Friday after Thanksgiving, also known as Black Friday where even today we see news stories of hundreds of people fighting over goods at various brick and mortar stores. What’s more important is the growth of online Christmas shopping, now known as Cyber Monday which seems to account for most of whatever growth there is in shopping. Even that part is awful: that they keep track, year over year, the average spending per person/family. Takes a little more of the joy out of the holiday, doesn’t it?