Christmas Shopping in July

The email from a close friend said that they used to scorn those who spent so much time in June, July, and August doing their Christmas shopping. My friend said that he looked around in the middle of October and already had all of his shopping done. He said it was funny how life pulls yours strings.
For me the act of having Christmas stuff in the stores before Thanksgiving has always been an exploitation of the Christmas meaning. Thanksgiving is a holiday which is supposed to remind you to be happy and thankful for what you already have. Christmas is now supposed to be the season where you suddenly have to be unhappy with what you already have so that you can make a list of all the things you just have to have. So Thanksgiving, except for the food industry, is not a big marketing season. So we can forget Thanksgiving and start to push the sales by the first of November.
This year the Christmas season skipped over Halloween as well. Christmas stuff in the stores in October. There is a potential bright side of this for the Christian community. The more and more they move the commerical Christmas marketing season away from the time of the Christmas celebration within the worshipping community the easier it may become for Christian people to teach their children the differences between Santa and Jesus. The longer the marketing and the more disconnected it becomes from the Christmas day within the Church, the more chance the believing community has for separating the commericalization of Christmas from the holy day of the faith community.
It was a couple of years ago when a Muslim student in the Duke University newspaper marveled at what the Christian community had allowed to happen to its high holy day. She said Look at what they have done to your story, look at how they exploit the Christ, look at how awful they manipulate the message. We Muslims would never allow that happen to our holy days. And judging from the reaction to some cartoons, they do not take kindly to people messing with their Prophet.
But it may just be one of those hopeful acts of providence, that the marketing people will so try to expand the marketing time to exploit Christmas that they will get it started so early that it loses all connection with Christmas and Christian community can have its holy time back again.
So we can pray.