I've been seeing Christmas decorations along side Halloween costumes in the stores since early October.

I work part-time in a department store (mainly for the health care benefits, since my husband is self-employed). The Christmas decorations went out on the sales floor about three weeks ago, located on the next isle over form the Halloween stuff. The freight crew worked from midnight this morning to move the Halloween candy, and replace it with Christmas candy. I would normally have worked with them, but took the day off for All Souls Day.

The dreaded so-called "Christmas" music will start the day after Thanksgiving, and it will start out, for the first two weeks or so, having at least some actual Christmas carols, along with secular "holiday" songs. By about two week before Christmas, the songs will have changed to just "holiday" songs, some of which are really awful. I'm not looking forward to hearing the several different versions of "Santa Baby," and "Baby, it's Cold Outside." Sometimes I can tune them out, but not usually. Even worse, sometimes they stick in my head and replay in my mind after I get off of work.  :shocked:

Don't you have Thanksgiving between Hallowe'en and Christmas too?

Yes, Thanksgiving is on Nov. 27 this year (it's always on a Thursday). It used to be that Christmas merchandise in stores, in this country, wasn't put out until the day after Thanksgiving. And then about 15 or so years ago (I can't remember when, exactly), it started being put out just after Halloween. Now it's put out even before Halloween. Some of us think that it makes Christmas even more commerical than it was before, in that the focus of Christmas is in buying a lot of "stuff." I think the only reason that the secular culture tolerates Christmas (religious holiday) is because it helps the economy. A great deal of money is made on Christmas gift sales in this country. I don't know what it's like in England. Maybe Christmas is a bit less materialistic there. I would hope so.

Don't worry Meg you're not alone. I too used to work in the dreaded retail industry (unlike other "conservatives" I don't praise the limitless junk down at Wal-Mart) and had to work the night away during the days before Halloween putting up junk for Christmas and then to top it off that same company "asked me" to come in and greet stupid consumers as a "happy employee with the Christmas spirit" during the December weeks. Thank God I have found a better job for the time being since I never want to go back to retail.

Good for you for getting out of retail! I can't imagine having to be the 'happy employee with the Christmas spirit,' and greeting customers at the door. Fortunately the chain that I work for doesn't have that. You're right about the limitless junk, most of which is from China (the non-food stuff). There's a policy at my company to give the customers a wide variety of a seletion, because studies have shown that customers but more if they have a big selection. It just seems rediculous to me, though. Who needs to have 200 different types and varieties of shampoo, or 60 different types of toothpastes to choose from? It just bogles the mind.

I had to pick up a pair of shoes for a family memeber yesterday and a couple stores already had decorations and the Christmas music playing.