[Okay, real talk] Christmas Spirit

Shops started selling christmas decorations crap in September 😂😀

Its appropriate starting the day after thanksgiving, not a day earlier.

November 1st - Thanksgiving... has a holiday to hype up itself. I guess food can only sell itself so much.

Simple, start in December.

November is Turkey/Harvest season.

December is for Xmas and spirit of giving/helping.

I might be misremembering it but aren't christmas preparations supposed to start around the 8 of december?

I used to work retail and we got Christmas trees in July.

Things must be different on your end 😀, I noticed shops here putting their Xmas merchandise up in the last week of August. Only ever see the Xmas tragics buying anything before mid October. Myself I'd say in an ideal world the first or second week of November is reasonable, but we all know we don't live in that world.
To be honest I only started actively looking at the Xmas crap this last week or so, will probably take more of an interest in a few weeks. Xmas isn't the same for me anymore but I don't begrudge others from getting their fill, I just wish it wasn't so in your face as 3+ months ahead. Besides we wouldn't want it to take up too much space, I mean the supermarkets here have to get their hot cross buns ready to go a few days after Boxing Day 🙄.

When I used to work in the Food and Drinks Warehouse section (B2B in Germany) X-mas stuff to store/stock would already start appearing in Mid July.
Granted, orders for those items would probably only start around August/September but eventually it got to be that when X-mas or oher public holidays finally came around you felt like you'd already had them 🤨
Also, those were probably the most stressful times at work, especially if some weekdays were missing. Inevitably that would just mean more work for the remaining days, either before the holiday or a huge backlog afterwards.
So, getting ready for christmas (or finally coming to terms with it finally happening) was mostly late december.
That's if you already got all the presents ordered or bought early ... 😉

Xmas isn't meaningful to me. If anything, it's just a glorified shopping season. I'll find a few things my family and I would like, at a discounted price, and life will go on.

Christmas is very little to me sadly these days i see less and less family - the only part i am looking forward to is my Community Christmas giveaway train again this year

I personally believe the natural start for real Christmas time should be 1st of December.

November is very patriotic month in Latvia where I come from. On 11th of November we have remembrance day for soldiers who fell fighting for independence. And on 18th of November we have the independence day itself.

The whole month goes by with candles, wearing Latvian flags and being patriotic. So for us October is dedicated for Halloween, November for patriotic themed products and in the end of November, beginning of December Christmas spirits start. I did notice that stores started putting out decorations and Christmas stuff already before Halloween, but it seems a bit too early since there isn't even snow yet.

December 1st and not a minute sooner. I already saw several ads for Christmas stuff before Halloween had even passed...

My job started playing Christmas music on Halloween -_-

Christmas is for children. They're the ones who can really enjoy Xmas. The rest of us? Non-avoidable commitments, buying gifts for family, attending family mettings/meals/dinner (well, some like this part), bearing with carols and decoration (well, many like this part), and if you have children? Double that.

It might seem a sour and bitter view, but it's like Valentine's. It all has changed into a huge commercial thing while few struggle to get into the real spirit. For decades I've only celebrated the end of the year, not because I find it significant, but because here it's an excuse for an excessive dinner followed by party until dawn and then some more.

October!

I think I'll just blur Halloween and Christmas together this year. By getting gifts sooner I can get a lot of actual stress off my shoulders. Not a fan of Christmas music, but I kinda like the decorations (Halloween still my jam), and I absolutely adore the Christmas-y smell of gingerbread, cinnamon, pine tree and such. I'm not looking forward to the campaign of visiting family at multiple locations, because of the time constraints. Even if distances are nowhere what US folks often do (everything is within a 100-150km radius), it's lots of packing, coming and going, change of settings... it's overwhelming for me, and turns into a blur. But I'm thankful, that this is the biggest issue of mine about it, it's still a lucky situation.

When the Steam holiday sale starts.

I will speak up as someone for whom Christmas is a religious event. I decry, like many here, how for the vast majority (especially the vendors) it has devolved into nothing more than a shallow economic event. I and my family try to "keep Christ in Christmas". We start the season with the beginning of Advent... (the very end of November normally). And our tree and decorations stay up until the beginning of February - the "old" end of the Christmas season. So folks look at us as "late" for not putting decorations up until December and then weird for leaving them up for over a month after it has "ended". 😀

Growing up, my dad's rule was "no Christmas talk until after Remembrance Day". After that, he'd ask us kids for Christmas lists and start getting the outside lights ready to put up. My mom typically puts up her outside decorations (wreath, lights for the railing on the front steps, ribbons on the mailbox) the first week of December. Their tree and interior decorations go up around a week before Christmas, and come down on New Year's Day. Outside stuff gets taken down a couple of weeks later. This all seems pretty reasonable to me

I've never had my own tree, or decorations, or anything like that. I'm not really a Christmas person. As the extended family has grown up and spread out, there have been fewer social obligations and expectations around the holidays, and that suits me just fine. I'd be happy to have Christmas contained to the month of December, but I'm not going to die on that hill. I'm not even going to lightly bleed on it.

I always prepare about the beginning of Christmas. But in my home city there is a huge display of christmas lights, and they usually start preparing around August. Which is crazy.

I don't think you should celebrate Christmas until December. However, I still don't think he was justified in driving through that parade.