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Not that long ago, Christmas was only one day... December 25th.
People didn't put up their trees until the night before and
shopping didn't happen until around the 20th. Forget about
stores advertising about sales and buying quickly.

Then families started celebrating two days, the 24th and 25th
to make the two sides of the family feel included. Trees were

still freshly cut and dried out to quickly to allow them to be
put up much earlier than the 21st. This fit with the Pagan
celebrations of Yule, where they often decorated with 'hanging
of the greens' ceremonies. People started moving further away
from one another that meant they needed to start their Christmas
shopping a little earlier in order to mail them across the country.
Still decorating was limited to two weeks before Christmas.

A time came that stores started realizing that the major portion
of their income came in the weeks before Christmas. They started
making a big deal on the day after Thanksgiving. That Friday was
reserved for the kick off day for the Christmas season. Stores
hired people to work late Thanksgiving night for the grand
unveiling of the Christmas decorations on Friday morning.
Santa arrived at the malls, after he had traveled down 34th Street
in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. We still had the division
between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

What happen? Now Christmas items start showing up in some stores
in August. Decorations are for sale with Halloween costumes
and the stores start their Christmas decorating in mid-November.
Santa has already been at the malls for two weeks! On TV
there are shows dedicated on how to survive Black Friday! It's
like boot camp for shoppers. Sales that never happened until
Dec 26th are advertised a month earlier.

Jewish families feel like they have to compete with Christmas,
giving more and more gifts than the traditional 8 that normally
is given to children.

This is nuts! While I'm not a Christian, I still believe
that the Christmas season is meant to be about family, love,
appreciation, warmth and light. It's never meant to be about
gross commercialization. Even in the original movie
"Miracle on 34th Street", they talk about selling simply to
make a profit, and that was almost 60 years ago.
Have we learned nothing since then? It's become so much
worse than the writers of the movie could have ever dreamed.

Out of frustration by the blatant commercialization of

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