Coming to a store near your: Christmas in November

By David Dunch

Sports Editor

I went to the local mall last week -

yes, guys can go to the mall; besides,

there are always good-looking girls there - and I stopped by the Hallmark store to pick up a birthday card. As I stepped inside, I felt like I was instantaneously transported to the day before Christmas.

Those colorful, annoying, blinking lights were hung throughout the store, blinding me with every twinkle. "Jingle Bell Rock" blared in the background (although it was a definite improvement on the 'N Sync garbage being played in the mall itself). The smell of pine was overwhelming. Every aisle of the store was filled with Santa knickknacks, nativity scenes or Peanuts ornaments for the tree. It was the last week of October. It was disgusting.The bombardment didn't stop there. It seemed like every other store in the mall was in some way getting ready for the holiday which, by my calculation, is still 51 days away, people! The mall itself was touting the arrival of its Santa the weekend after Thanksgiving. Ah yes, Thanksgiving, a holiday that comes before Christmas. How soon we all forget about the Pilgrims and the Indians and giving thanks for what we have once the specter of expensive, unnecessary gifts are involved.

It seems like this pattern of decorating for Christmas is one that gets earlier and earlier every year. It doesn't stop at the mall, either. Helpless families are also becoming victims. As a kid, I remember my family would start lugging down the 77 boxes of decorations about two weeks before Christmas. Then, suddenly, when I was a teenager some neighbors started putting up their decorations right after Thanksgiving. Of course, we had to keep up. This is an affliction affecting all families. Pretty soon, my family, and others like it, will start to decorate for Christmas on Aug. 12.

The decorations themselves are also getting more extravagant every year. In the past, a simple string of lights at the base of one's roof would pass for totally acceptable Christmas decorations - not anymore. People today go all out. They're insane. It's like Tim Allen in "Home Improvement" times 10. Not only do they put up enough lights to warrant the commission of a new power station, but also they have fake snow on the lawn and in the windows, Santa and reindeer on the roof, and a nativity scene in the driveway. I don't know, but the last time I checked it wasn't snowing in Bethlehem and Rudolph with his red nose was nowhere in sight.