Jericho: This Christmas crap has got to go!

Okay, I'm a card-carrying grinch. Bah-humbug and all that. Granted. Admitted. Guilty!

But, it's October. Since October 1st I have seen more and more Christmas paraphernalia displays in the retail outlets. Folks, it's not even Halloween yet.

We're at the local big-box grocery store and they have a section of the store that is a mixture of Halloween and Christmas. Devil horns and Santa Claus - it should be illegal!

I know most of you get all gooey about X-mas, but, please, can we just confine it to November and December? Do you really need to buy your tree before the Halloween candy goes stale? Is anyone going to put up their tree before Thanksgiving?

And this crap keeps getting worse. It used to be that it was just after Thanksgiving. Then it was November 1st and somewhere in the last five years, as Christmas sales have continued to WEAKEN, that the retail chains have started displaying this spray-painted plastic Fah-la-la earlier and earlier. If this keeps going, stores will go from Christmas to Valentines to July 4th (gotta sell dem plastic flags!) to Halloween and right back to freakin' X-mas! And I bet sales will continue to weaken! If we aren't careful, they will just eliminate some Holidays and go Christmas, Valentines and right back to Christmas. Joy to the world!

Catch a clue, Corporate America, if sales are weakening, make the holiday more special. Put the trees out three nights before the event - not three months. If it's the night before Christmas and Daddy needs to buy a tree and stocking stuffers, he will pay damn near anything to not have to hear his kids whine. If he can pick up Clearance Christmas items on December 1st, we're looking at a soft market.

Let's put the "sometime around the end of the year" back into Christmas!