How Early Is Too Early?

To be playing Christmas music, or to have Christmas decorations sat out?

How about the black Friday deals, now they're starting ON Thanksgiving. What?

I saw a meme once that said something like Black Friday is spent buying crap we don't need after giving thanks for what we have.

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I have Christmas music playing on the radio. Usually they wait until after Thanksgiving, but they no longer do.

Can we not get through one holiday at a time?

Etymology
"The word holiday derived from the notion of "Holy Day", and gradually evolved to its current form.
The word "sacred" descends from the Latin sacrum, which referred to the gods or anything in their power, and to sacerdos, priest; sanctum, set apart. It was generally conceived spatially, as referring to the area around a temple." In my opinion it is always a good thing to set apart a day or days to reach the spirit of giving and as importantly receiving gifts from the Holy Spirit pasing through us like Light

Is that in reference to Thanksgiving?

It bothers me that we're decided a good deal and consumerism is more important than spending the day with loved ones. If shops are opening now at 8pm and earlier, that means the lines will have started even earlier than that! What about Thanksgiving dinner, time with family etc?

As for Christmas, it's just starting too early lol

Mushing holidays is becoming a general trend.

Stores here in Houston began putting Christmas stuff out the day after Halloween.

My neighbors began putting up Halloween decorations in September.

Now Rosaura is putting up Christmas decorations inside & she wants the outside lights put up on the castle tonight.

I don't believe everything I read but I read somewhere that there was more than one Mayflower and one of my great great great great grandfathers came over on the second pilgrimage .

Festivals and Feasts in Ancient Judaism
catholic-resources.org/Bible/Festivals.htmCached - SimilarShare

- Both festivals combined became a major pilgrimage feast,
1. The first pilgrims were protestants escaping religious persecution
2. The Jewish tradition of breaking bread as a sacred symbol of solidarity survived many splits in christian habits
3. I think we may agree that government should not regulate commerce

I guess I decorate for so many things at my house that I actually want to wait for set seasons.. lol. I have my "fall" stuff out now.. that was put up the day after Halloween. The day after Thanksgiving I will take all this stuff down and put up my Christmas stuff, until... mid Jan. Then up goes Valentines... you get the point.

I have too much crap.

I used to take an old women to a doctors office that left the Christmas Tree up year round . When Valentines came they put hearts on the tree and so on

Haha, okay thats a cute idea.

Ha, I was JUST talking to one of my friends about this on Facebook. I just went to Target for groceries and stuff, and there is a giant "TIS THE SEASON, MERRY CHRISTMAS" display hanging from the ceiling as the first thing you see. I was like "Is it? Is it really the season? I think there is still a turkey standing between here and the season."

Once I got into the car, the radio had an ad for a "pre-Black-Friday" sale. Holy Sweet Martha.

You would have to pay me a lot of money to get me to go shopping on Black Friday. I don't like shopping already, if it's busy. Heck. No. Plus, I love Thanksgiving. I want to hang out with my family, eat, maybe listen to Christmas songs for the first time on the ride home, and then roll into bed in a massive food stupor. I do NOT want to go stand in a line in front of Best Buy for hours, tripped out on tryptophan.

That said, I do enjoy getting Christmas presents for people, and I'll have to hold myself back a bit this year. I'd like to make things for people. I just get tempted by all the pretty glittery ornaments and things. I also love Christmas decorations, and everything festive. I just want it to wait until closer to Christmas. If it's Christmas season from October -January, then it's just not as special.

^^Had a friend in New Orleans that did that, Michael.

Christmas
Then Valentines
Then Purple Green & Gold for Mardis Gras
Then Green for St Patricks
By that time there were few needles left on the tree

Larry she used a real tree? lol

Sib, you and I are eye-to-eye. I make all of my Christmas gifts for the most part now, but I also shop year round for gifts! If I see something I like that's perfect for, say, my mother in law, and it's on sale? Heck yeah I get it right away! I usually end up getting the people I shop for a little more than normal too, because it's not an expense all at once. I love gift giving. MM does a Christmas gift exchange (this is our second year doing it), and I have a blast with it!

That's adorable! I bet it's fun to get things sent from all over the place : )

It's a lot of fun. Last year Lu sent me some Canadian snacks... and got me addicted to a treat I can't get here, go figure! lol. Mel and I send each other packages often, mostly food it seems. Poptarts for her are .. I want to say $11 a box.

No one should have to pay so much for pop tarts.

Would you mind if she opened her pop tarts a little early just in case the Mayans were on to something?

HAHAH! Yes. I will allow that!

I feel like the Grinch this year. Christmas stuff has been out since late September and every time I see the decorations I cringe. It's far too early, even in November I find it too early.

Speaking of MM gift exchange, we should remind the Troops, Brittle. Britt and her poptarts are lifesavers, I return the favour by sending her timtams. She's too much of an American to eat the vegemite though!

SEND ME THE VEGEMITE!!!!!!

Slather it on warm buttered toast. Yummmmm

I'm having to make do with Marmite.

Holidays are not 'holy' days in these days.

I know about Christmas since I was in an Evangelical school and used to sing along in the Christmas chorus... year after year, Christmas became (I'm talking about Lebanon) a day for fanciful stuff and big consumption of food and money, disregarding the fact the this day represents the birth of Jesus....... So actually, this day lost its essence here. Is it common, I guess, worldwide?

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The same goes with Ramadan month in Islam, here... It became a month not for prayers, but for fancy food and desserts and TV series/programs, etc.... I watch TV in ramadan more than I pray :P

Ew, I forgot I even had the vegemite...

Lp I agree.. Christmas here has lost its meaning, though people will argue the origin of the true meaning. I was surprised to see my mother in laws family go through scripture and talk about the birth of Jesus etc. My family, while believers, have never been followers. So I didn't grow up with the importance on Jesus during the holiday, same goes for Easter. That's changed for Jason and I now, and when we have kids, I hope to make the holidays focused on Him.

Were a society of stuff. Want, want, want, take, take, take.

^ Big like for the last 3 lines!

I don't think the shift from prayer to fancy dinner and gifts is 100% due to wantwantwant taketaketake. Of course we can, in part, blame capitalism for this.

The reality is that we've progressed so far as a society that prayer is no longer a regular part of many people's lives be it a holiday or not. Religion still exists but it's slipping away - this is not such a bad thing as long as we can recognize that we need to build a good foundation of morals for ourselves and our children in some other way.

I agree that Christmas is obviously just becoming a selling point for many products nowadays, but I don't think that spending time with our families and appreciating that time spent together (whether we pray to an idol or not) is a bad thing. I buy gifts for my friends and family not because I have to, but because I like to give them things. If I don't get gifts in return, it sucks because I see everyone else enjoying whatever this year's new crap is, but the world is not lost and I can take solace knowing that others are happy.

That's what Christmas is about now.

Radio stations have an embargo on playing Christmas songs until December. Decorations are already up in towns and shops: a well known ploy to try and get people into the Christmas spending mood.

I was always of the mindset that any time after December 8th was acceptable to start with all the Christmas stuff.

How many think that the secularization of holidays coincides with their commercialization?

I wonder if we are not trying to fill a void that the spiritual aspect of the holidays has left in its disappearance.

We seem to reject the religious aspects of the holiday only to replace it with the sensuality of food and revelry or the myths of quasi secular figures (Santa, Great Pumpkin, etc,) while winking at each other: "yeah these are fun to play with but we know they are not real." "Oh, look! Here come the millions of letters delivered to the courtroom to 'Santa Claus' so he must be real!"

Hmmm.
Are we better off with this result?
No

We need to try something new,

I sing christmas songs all year round, but only the classics by Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby.

I don't watch tv or listen to the radio so a huge chunk of that hard core advertising that gets your brain chewing itself up over christmas doesn't effect me.

I do my shopping no earlier than Dec 20th, cause I'm a pro.

Holy days haven't lost their spirituality for me. I'm no Christian, but I love the spirituality that lies behind Christmas - love, family, sharing, giving, sacrifice, gratitude. You might say, in that case, that we shouldn't need a special day to celebrate these fundamental values. But there is something eternal about holidays- the importance, the fun, the affirmation of a ritual:

"The next day the little prince came back.
'It would have been better to come back at the same time of the day,'said the fox. 'For instance, if you come at four in the afternoon, when three o'clock strikes I shall begin to feel happy. The closer our time approaches, the happier I shall feel. By four o'clock I shall already be getting agitated and worried; I shall be discovering that happiness has its price! But if you show up at any old time, I'll never know when to start dressing my hearth for you... We all need rituals.'
'What is a ritual?' said the little prince.
'Something else that is frequently neglected,' said the fox.
'It's what makes one day different from the other days, one hour different from the other hours.' "

--- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Oh, gosh. That's not even a particularly sad quote from the Little Prince, and it STILL makes me want to cry.

Tony and I have been reading that book aloud to each other. We haven't gotten to the parts yet where I will be bawling.

Oh, Sibs, I know. In my last house, there was a brick wall outside my window. I painted the last drawing on it - the slope of the dune with the star above.

My favourite line in the book is "...because of the colour of the wheat fields."

Christmas just makes me sad and nostalgic and everything in that range

hahaha... some people here never take down their christmas tree's and just change the decoration according to the holiday...

like, in feb they take down the christmas balls and fill them with hearts, and then its carnival season so they down the hearts and fill it with face masks and colorful stuff

I'm too much of a.. I don't know what?
but I really don't like any holiday

xoxo muah lof

For thirty odd years I actually have had extra copies of two books that I give as "no-reason" gifts: The Little Prince and Siddhartha. It is a rare person to whom I give both.

Gahhhhhhhhhh you guys.

You all know (maybe) how much I'm attached to my books. There are lots of books that I really really like, and it's fun to find people who like them too. And there are books that I think are excellent, but that I don't touch lovingly when I find them on my bookshelf. But there are a few that I love, deeply, maybe even beyond their literary merit. And when I find people who truly love them too, I feel like we'd have to be kindred spirits, despite whatever differences we might have. It's just a good feeling.

Ugh get your hands on

Love, Dad
by Evan hunter sybs and lets be friends forever

Haha, sounds good!

Saw this on tumblr

Do not pity the dead, pity the living, and above all those who respond "I don't read," to the question "What's your favorite book?"

I read the little prince not so long ago...a girl gave me that book and "The Prophet". She didn't have much money, but she bought them second hand and replaced the covers with her drawings. I still have em, very special books.

Http://www.poems-and-quotes.com/life/poems.php?id=176176

I think I was heavily under the influence of "The Prophet "by Kahlill Gibran
When I wrote my first Love poem .I remember being almost in a trance like state when I wrote
"World Peace" and sent it to a poetry contest. It was beat by a free style poem about the depth of a laundry mat. I was reminded by the theme of "when is it too early" when the question should have been in my mind "When is it too late to pray for peace on earth and good will toward man