Christmas Catalogs on Halloween?

Yesterday our mailbox was stuffed full of Holiday catalogs…really... on Halloween! I’m curious; do you start your Christmas shopping/decorating on Halloween?  This morning the coffee shop was promoting their newest coffee flavor “Christmas Cookie”.   What happened to the “Autumn Brew”?  While some shoppers may welcome early holidays, I’m not one of them. I believe the fun-size candy bars in the little plastic pumpkin should be gone before candy canes hit the shelves.

It's a phenomenon called Christmas creep or in the project management world scope creep. It’s when holiday sales, shopping and decorations show up earlier and earlier each year. This year, it's more evident than ever. Starting well before Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), which is the traditional start of the holiday shopping spree.

Thankfully there are still holdouts. Nordstrom is adhering to its long-standing policy of no holiday decorations until Black Friday, I just love that policy!

Here are my two firm rules:

First, and this goes for all holidays, no celebrating until the previous holiday has passed. This means you should wait until at least Nov. 23 to put up the tree, but feel free to give yourself a couple more days to digest all that cranberry sauce.

Second, Christmas evokes thoughts of snow, ice skating and ugly sweaters. If it’s too warm for all those; then it’s too warm for Christmas.

The first rule is the most important, but if a warm December is a possibility (like here in Atlanta), at least wait for all the leaves to fall.

I hope you don’t think I’m a Scrooge. I really do love Christmas! I don’t want to take away Christmas; I just want to make the preparation a bit shorter. Besides, you don’t need more than a day to shop anymore, go to Amazon, they’ll even wrap it for you (wink). Happy Holidays!